Editorials

As Seen On T.V.

We all have to do things we rather not to sometimes, putting ourselves out for our loved ones. Going to watch a film you’ll hate with your partner, staying out late and not drinking to provide your friends with a safe ride home, grinding enough sleeping pills into your elderly relatives tea to make their final moments peaceful ones.

For me, as this is a gaming blog and not a euthanasia one, it’s more a case of buying a game I ordinarily wouldn’t. It’s my sisters birthday next week, and as she’s an adult there’s nothing she desperately wants or needs. She did kind of hint that she wanted money, but even though I tend to ask for the same thing I feel weird giving my older sister cash as a present, I feel obliged to put more thought into her present. That extra thought was actually just a text asking her if there was a game that she wanted. I knew that she was broke and a bit bored with what she had for her Wii, even though she has my copy of the almost fantastic Zack & Wiki.

It turns out my sister has turned into a bit of a cliche given that she wants Big Beach Sports, probably the most advertised game on T.V. at the minute.She never used to be this way (my sister), back when I was a kid she listened to great music and watch some pretty cool films. The day it all changed was when she dug out her old New Kids on the Block cds, abandoning the likes of Pearl Jam and Nirvana. I could rant here about having to listen to I Should Be So Lucky through my bedroom wall, but I wont. My sister, despite not really owning a console at any point in her life (until the PS2, which she sold a year ago) actually liked some pretty good games. She’d play the likes of Streets of Rage and Road Rash on my Megadrive, Mario on my brothers Snes. She loved Ecco on the Dreamcast, except for that heart attack inducing giant Great White at the end of the first area.

Even when she did get a PS2, though she filled it with licenced games, her heart was in the right place. She remembered Goldeneye being good on the N64, so was trying to recreate that. One of the Simpsons games was a rip off (err, allegedly) of the mighty Crazy Taxi, another game she adored. She also had a GTA game, again because she loved the original, I’ve no idea how far she got with it, but at least she was thinking about the right games.

With the Wii though things have changed. To my knowledge she hasn’t started Zack & Wiki because it’ll be too hard (for the record, it’s not all that hard, especially early on), she refused to borrow Resident Evil 4 off me because it too would be too hard. A shame because she’d love it, or she would have done a few years back anyway. Instead her Wii is being used the way critics accuse most Wii’s of being used, as a Wii Sports machine.

In the past I’ve defended the casual market, just because they might not be what we look for in a game doesn’t mean there’s no value to them. the prime example if something like Mario & Sonic at the Olympics, it’s a multiplayer game plain and simple, and when played as such it’s a great game (well, a ‘great’ game) but it’s hardly Ikaruga for hardcore appeal (don’t get me started on the facets of ‘Hardcore’, but there’s some very cynical people who wouldn’t give a game like Ikaruga a chance yet claim to be teh hardcorz). If all you want is something diverting then these games can fill that hole. We’re all guilty of buying less than stellar games because of some quirky, license or aesthetic appeal.

Thing is it’s getting harder to defend these game. They seem to be getting more and more cynical and I’m waiting for the sign that some of the casual gamers are making a step up. Both my sister and my mum have gone backwards, to the point where a simple puzzle game terrifies them because it’s not got Dr. Kawashima’s erotically angular face on the box. Maybe that should have been the focus of this post rather than just an after thought at the end. Maybe I’ve been spending too much time on the internet and I’ve let its teenage cynicism infest me. I don’t know any more.

What I do know is, I’d have rather spent more money than I did on a better game for her.

Microsofts Conference.

Microsoft’s conference was yesterday and if you haven’t been around online since yesterday evening, then you may just find the internets alive with a certain piece of news. However, I’m not going to mention anymore to do with that just now, I’m gonna re-watch the entire conference and post everything that happened. Enjoy.

Initially, predictions for Microsofts E3 from many sources seemed to include a new Halo, more fromn Lionheads Fable 2, new dashboard and the possibility of some sort of Wiimote style device.

“Big franchises are the mainstay of our industry”, never a truer word said, especially considering the Autumn/Winter period we had last year with Halo 3, PGR4, Bioshock, Call of Duty 4 and The Orange Box all being released, plus more, and the beginning of this year being given Burnout Paradise and GTAIV.

Retro style introduction to a trailer for Fallout 3, that we have been promised is only half the trailer that will indtroduce us to the harshness and humour of Bethesda Software’s next game. Then we were shown around a part of a post-apocalyptic Washington DC and by christ its absolutely gorgeus! The game features either real-time combat, or a bit of KOTOR style “stacked” combat where you can target specific things which looks rather interesting. We’re promised that the game is huge and that there will be around 100 hours of gameplay, unsuprising considering this is the develop behind Oblivion. Fallout 3 will be available this Autumn and there will be exclusive downloadable content available for the XBox 360 and Games for Wiindows versions of the game.

Next up is Resident Evil 5, on show is the first public demo of the game. The demo see’s Chris Redfield exploring a derelict building in Africa whilst investigating a biohazard breakout. At this point in the Resident Evil timeline, Chris is no longer a member of STARS, but has joined a new organisation called BSAA. At one point Chris can’t get any further, Capcom use this opportunity to show off a new online co-op mode, the second character is a woman called Sheva who is also a member of BSAA. At this point we get to see some action, so far there were two sets of enemies, one set with physical weapons, these behaved alot like the ones in the village in Resident Evil 4, however some had weapons and these seemed to work in a squad formation. The end of the demo introduces a new version of the chainsaw wielding maniac from Resident Evil 4. Resident Evil 5 will have a simultaneous world-wide release of Friday 13th March 2009.

Time for the over-hype to start now, as Peter Molyneux takes to the stage to talk about Fable 2. His first announcement is that the game is finished. As with the original Fable, you start as a kid and eventually become the hero of the game. Suprisingly, Fable 2 will include a co-op mode, this is worked in a very odd way. As you explore Albion you will see purple orbs flying around, these are actually people from your friends list, playing their single play games and all you have to do is walk up to one of these orbs and press a button on it to invite that player to join you in your game. No lobby or anything and this can be done for any single moment in the game. The game will be available this October.

Gears 2 next, with Cliff Blezinski (glad he’s dropped that Cliffy B tag) taking to the stage. We’re shown a gameplay demo, with Cliff playing as Marcus and another member of the Epic staff playing as Dom. Not much has changed from the original Gears, its still very brown, grey and black and the gunplay is still heavily focused on the games cover dynamic. Obviously this is no bad thing, Gears was insanely popular on its release and not alot needed to be changed, not alot has to be said about Gears of War 2, we knows its gonna be good. However there is going to be a new 5 player co-op mode and the game will be available worldwide on November 7th 2009 exclusively on XBox 360.

At this point Don Mattrick heads back to the stage, but what a line-up already, none of them were suprises but by this Christmas we’ll all be able to play Fallout 3, Fable 2 and Gears of War 2, its beginning to look as exciting as the Autumn/Winter period from last year. Mattrick reckons that in 2008 people will spend $48 billion on videogames, thats more than the music and movie industries! The new dashboard for the XBox 360 is now unveiled and its impressive, even if it does feel more like iTunes. The new Avatar’s are officially shown off, they’re still ugly though, they have an odd realistic but cute appearance to them that doesn’t quite work for me, its as though Microsoft can’t decide between the Mii or Home route so they’ve gone for the middle ground, which doesn’t really work. It is mentioned that you can win clothes in games though, so that could be interesting unlocking say a MJOLINAR suit from Halo Wars or something. There will also be a new community channel a static screen that updates with your friends avatars as they appear online, from here you can have a “Live Party” with upto 8 people, using your avatars as your online representation as you share photo’s or on a gameshow on XBox Live Prime Time. One game you can play will be 1 vs 100, an online version of one of the shows the BBC use to support the National Lottery on a Saturday. However, its not just there for fun, you will also be able to win real prizes although no idea of what these could be yet. You can also share your games library with the people in your party and launch games such as Uno for everybody with just one button press, although not sure about using Avatars for that rather than the Vision camera, however I imagine you’ll be able to choose between the two.

XBox Live Arcade news now.

Geometry Wars 2 from Bizarre creations will be available next month on XBox Live Arcade, whilst NAMCO Bandai are also releasing the sequel to Galaga, titled Galaga Legions on XBLA next month too. Portal Stil Alive will be available on XBox Live Arcade exclusively, whilst there’ll also be a South Park game available to download. Microsoft are currently gettidn ready for the first wave of community developed (XNA) games for XBox Live.

Microsoft have also formed partnerships with NBC, Universal and Netflix, giving you access to even more movies and TV shows to download as rentals to your hard drive. The Netflix rentals will also be able to be shared via the XBox Live Party system, meaning yu don’t always have to have friends over when you all want to watch a movie.

Back to the games then, this year we should be seeing Prince of Persia, Call of Duty World at War, Tomb Raider Underworld, Need For Speed Undercover, Pro Evo 2009 and Mirrors Edge. The first downloadable episode for GTAIV shall be available later this year, and there will be over 1000 games available for 360 by the end of 2008.

Now something from Rare, in the form of the new Banjo Kazooie game, a game that relies heavily on building vehicles and using them to progress through the game. That was immediatly followed by a trailer for Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise. It seems you will be able to buy cards and, using the XBox Live Vision Camera, scan them into the game to open up even more Pinata. The original Banjo Kazooie will also be available on XBLA, and all three games will be available for the Christmas period. We’ll also be seeing a new Scene It game, whilst another “party” game was introduced, titled You’re in the Movies, the game utilises the XBox Vision Camera so that you can play Eyetoy Play style games, your actions in these minigames are then converted to a short B-Movie style trailers. However the introduction voice for the game is incredibly annoying. Next we our shown Guitar Hero World Tour, greeted by the audience by near complete silence. The game will essentially be Rock Band, but will also support 8 player online in a Battle of the Bands form. You will also be able to make and share music in the game with the games inbuilt Music Studio. When World Tour launches, you will be able to download 3 tracks from REM’s new album, you will also be able to download the whole of Metallica’s new album to play along to in-game. Microsoft Game Studios are also working on their own version of Singstar, titled Lips which will not only have songs on the disc, but will also allow you to use music from your own mp3 player (Zune and iPod were mentioned), interestingly, the guy behind such great games as Gitaroo Man and Elite Beat Agents is involved in the creation of Lips. Rock Band will premiere exclusively on XBox 360 in the US this year. Harmonix state that there will be 82 Master tracks on Rock Band 2, including a track for a new track from the Chinese Democracy album from Guns N Roses, there will also be a track from Bob Dylan and AC-DC will be on the list in the form of Let Their Be Rock, Metallica, Motorhead, Paramore and even more bands will be available. There will also be 20 bonus tracks available around launch that you will be able to download for free, not only that all the DLC from Rock Band will work on Rock Band 2 and you will not even have to disc swap if you want to play the songs from the original Rock Band disc as you will be able to import them into Rock Band 2, impressive stuff. Seems this winter will have a very large focus on music games on 360.

Now for that big announcement, Square Enix developing for XBox 360. The RPG legends will be bringing Infinite undiscovery, Star Ocean: The Last Hope and The Last Remnant, with Infinite Undiscovery will be available from the beginning of September worldwide (2nd in the US, 5th in Europe and 11th in Japan). Star Ocean will be available during Spring ‘09 with a real time trailer now available on XBox Marketplace. The Last Remnant will be a timed exclusive for XBox 360 and will be available this holiday season, the date at the end of the trailer stated 20th November 2008, it will also be available on Games for Windows. That’s not all, Square Enix decided to interupt Matterick to show off one more game trailer. Final Fantasy XIII is heading for XBox 360.

Heres the conference in full if you wish to watch it yourself.

Blending “youth” culture

Been meaning to write about this for a little while. As gamer’s we’ve gotten pretty used to being victimised by the likes of the Daily Mail attacking our past-time, and all we can do is complain wether its on podcasts or in text on dedicated sites such as this. Soem even take it to the point of voicing their opinions on comments pages up and down the internets. Videogames have been blamed for rises in crime, actual murders, education levels dropping, obesity, you name a problem, our chosen past time has probably footed the blame for it from one source or another, and you can usually find alot of the bile stemming from so called publications such as the Daily Mail.

However, our culture is not the only one that is seemingly under attack from these types. A few weeks ago a teenager by the name of Hannah Bond commited suicide, who was thirteen years old and a big fan of the band My Chemical Romance. The Daily Mail has taken it upon themselves to spit bile in the direction of the Emo movement. Their critiscms of the movement don’t come without any kind of official backing however, Roger Sykes the coroner who examined the young girls body after her unfortunate death declared that her taste in music played a part in her suicide attempt. Now, I know there are links between the emo culture, depression, self harm and even suicide, and I do have some opinions of bands such as My Chemical Romance making money off of the back of kids who have attatched themselves to such things. But this is nothing new within teenage culture.

Being a teenager is a very confusing and scary time and its easy to start believing and thinking the wrong things. It’s easy for this to lead into bouts of strong depression, self harm and the like, I know this as I have been down that path myself. However, to blame a band and movement for such things and believe that their the only culprits is blinding yourself to the truth, in fact teenagers seem to attach themselves to certain artists and particular songs as a way of helping understand their mood. I know that at my lowest I’d listen to Blink 182’s “Adams Song” over and over again as it would help me release and unhappy emotions. I understand this is deep, and so far not alot to do with gaming, but I do think that we gamers should be supporting teenagers who are being attacked by these stiffs at the Mail, and present a united front against a group of people within society that is ignorant to learning about these cultures their so happy to criticise. After all, surrounding yourself with music is as much of an escape from reality as playing a videogame, its as much a release of tension and emotion as playing a videogame and its as entertaining as playing a videogame, in this respect the very reasons we play games are also the very reasons people listen to particular bands and who are the Daily Mail to dictate to people what they can use to escape problems within their own lives or help deal with their own deeply buried emotions in a world that doesn’t accept unhappiness?

WASD The Matter You?

Gotta no respect? That may be the best title I’ve ever come up with.

Without wanting to sound like an advert for a razor, for me as a gamer, control is everything. You can have the greatest gameplay mechanics ever conceived, the biggest sprawling worlds packed with the most ludicrous enemies, but if you can’t interact with it all properly then the game will never reach the heights.

This is why I’ve never really embarked on a full blown love affair with the Survival Horror genre. sure there’s been some drunken one night stands, brief but mind blowing encounters, but there’s only been a handful of serious relationships. Me and RE: Code Veronica went steady for a while, D2 was awesome in the sack, and I thought I had something special with Silent Hill 2. But it wasn’t until Resident Evil 4 that my criticisms of a Survival Horror game didn’t start out with ‘clunky controls’.

In the current gaming climate controls seem to be the big issue, what with people getting sued and accusations of copycattery being thrown around. The Wii receives derision and acclaim in equal measure for it’s inaccurate/precise control schemes, and for what it’s worth Zack & Wiki drove me crazy with its motion controls yet Metroid is probably my favourite FPS this gen.

I’ve heard much talk over the past 5 years about how console FPS games’ controls have improved. I can believe it too, granted I’m not the biggest FPS player but even I can feel the fluid movement and tighter aiming that modern analogues bring. It’s not a surprise really given the obscene number of FPS games that have been released in the past few years developers would have been hard pushed not to learn something.

There’s one format though that has had unchanged controls for years, and is all too ready to boast about them. I am of course referring to the PC. At any given moments anywhere in the world there is a 30% chance you are about to be accosted by a PC gamer who will pin you down and berate you, the console gamer, for your sluggish imprecise controls. Your old defences of quicker loading times, lack of installs and no need for patches have been eroded by your own ravenous lust for power and 1080P’s. The arcade ports that PC gamers could only dream of are dead, and you already know deep in your heart that your favourite FPS game has a better port on the PC. So while you lie there no longer trying to free yourself, resigned to the PC gamers sweat dripping into your mouth, while his talk of anti-aliasing penetrates your ears. As you silently scream out for a saviour, a hero, a magnificent hunk, know that I am he.

I am your messiah and I have for you just 4 letters. W. A. S. D.

Speak them child and know there power, the PC gamers stalwart is also its biggest enemy. Try them, chances are your sat at a PC as you read these teachings, place your fingers on those sacred insignia and imagine playing through a 20 hour FPS with them. Now reach for R to reload, F to turn on your torch. G for grenades, Ctrl to grab and C to crouch. Without unfixing your eyes from the screen hit the number buttons to change weapon. Don’t you see, the keyboard is not an ergonomic gaming peripheral, it was never designed for precision movement, rapidly changing weapons, reacting to fluctuating conditions. This is our weapon brothers!

In all seriousness and without wanting to start some huge argument, the WASD control method is uncomfortable and cumbersome. I’m sure hardened PC gamers will be used to it, hell even I’m au fait with it and I’m hardly hardcore. It is such a staple of PC gaming though, and with good reason, everyone who owns a PC will also own a keyboard and a mouse.

I don’t think the WASD keys give you the same level of control as a pad either, platform sections in particular can be a struggle. Strafing is easy, but with an analogue stick not only can you strafe you can also circle around with a minute adjustment of your thumb. However for such a manoeuvre on either format you need a second hand either working a 2nd analogue stick or a mouse. Score 1 for the PC. there is no doubt that the mouse is more precise and responsive than the analogue stick. The stick is fine for looking around but precise aiming, particularly at speed is still not all it could be.

The solution to this is or course some sort of combination of analogue and mouse, and we already have one have one in the Wii. But until more FPS games appear on the machine it’s only a theoretical solution. Admittedly turning the camera isn’t right on the Wii yet, rather than having a locked focus in the centre of the screen, the pointer is allowed to roam free. Great picking off enemies already on screen, but the counters put in place to stop the screen from spinning get in the way of fast turning. For me all it needs is a button to be held to allow for camera movement, but I assume there’s a reason this hasn’t been implemented.

So what was the point of all this, I guess that no control scheme is perfect. There are a few examples such as the light gun and the Saturn pad & arcade stick (for fighters) that do as good a job as you could ever hope for, but they’re very specialised. In short then, the jack of all trades…

A PC Engine

Well I never thought it would happen but it has. I didn’t see it coming, I just didn’t, maybe I was being naive thinking I wouldn’t be affected in the way I have…

Ok deep breath Ben, you can do this.

I am… a PC Gamer. Wow, it feels like a weight has been lifted, I feel green and new, ready to face this world of new challenges . Alright so I’m exaggerating for effect, but I am genuinely taken aback by how quickly I’ve been hooked into the world of PC gaming.

I got a new pc a few weeks back, my old one had started making weird clicking noises before slowing right down, it also had real problems booting up. I figured the cooling for the CPU had packed up, my boss reckons it’s the HDD, either way I had to bite the bullet and get a new computer. Just as an aside my old computer seems to be working alright now, likely because it’s not on all the time like it used to be, so I reckon it is something to do with the cooling.

My old computer has lasted me and my family for about 5 years, it was pretty good when we got it although not stellar, and when I moved out it came with me and worked absolutely fine for what I wanted. When I was at school there was a real need to replace your computer after a few years, basic programs were advancing so fast that even if you weren’t using your PC to run games it would still begin to struggle astonishingly quickly. I’m not sure that’s quite the case now, or at least I hope not. My 5 year old PC needed some more ram and a bigger HDD, but aside from that there was nothing I needed it to do that it let me down on.

That was pretty much my logic with this new computer, rather than skimp and get a newer version of my old computer I thought I’d spend the money making sure things like the ram and the CPU would still being capable a few years down the line, ideally at least until I’ve paid for it. I looked at some really expensive computers, gaming ones, but the cost of them was insane! And really, how much better could they be in relation to their price? You end up paying a lot more for incrementally better machines. That’s not to say I wasn’t tempted, hell I was tempted by all sorts of stuff including a PC case that has a small screen built into it for viewing pictures and the like.

Truth is though I had no interest in playing games on it beyond Football Manager and Audiosurf, so as long as it had enough space that I wouldn’t have to manage my HDD as rigorously as I’d had to with the old PC, plenty of ram and a good CPU that would do everything I asked when I asked I was happy.

However, one of the best things about getting a new PC is replaying your old games with all the settings whacked up to full. It’s a simple stupid joy but it’s a good one, and it gives another burst of life to games that had been sitting on the shelf for a few years. Unfortunately I hadn’t calculated the Vista factor, meaning games like the Max Payne’s had problems running (although I got the 2nd one running) and I daren’t even attempt the likes of Alice and Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

I’ve mentioned this before but back when I was at school I lost pretty much all interest in gaming. I was pushed into getting rid of my Gamegear and my Megadrive (*cough* and 32X *cough*) and the 32bits had nothing to offer me. We flogged our Playstation and used some of the money to pick up Championship Manager 2 for our PC, we had Doom with a bunch of sound files (Evil Dead, Aliens, Beavis & Butthead) and were given the awesome Duke Nukem. I eventually found my way back to the Saturn but the likes of Quake, Football Manager, Warcraft 2, Half-Life and the already mentioned Max Payne have all dotted my gaming history.

I really did think though that my PC gaming days were behind me. While there is of course a gulf in power between a high end PC and the home consoles, there’s less of one in terms of games. While Crysis can’t be faithfully recreated on with the ps3 or the 360 it can be approximated. The Orange Box took one of PC gaming’s greatest series and recreated it magnificently. Halo, or perhaps a better example would be Call of Duty offer console gamers the online experience of a pacey fps.

There are of course certain types of games that still don’t really make the jump across, MMO’s are still rare although doable, strategy games are still the preserve of the PC and with good reason. This actually highlights a problem I’m having with console gaming at the minute. the 360 is so overwhelmed by FPS and action games, I know that’s not all there is but that’s its bread and butter, the PS3 seems desperate to follow suit and add a sprinkling of PS2 sequels that I didn’t like first time round. The Wii has actually been my preferred console since launch, it does offer alternatives and unique games, unfortunately there still isn’t a wealth of quality games coming out for it at the minute.

This is all starting to feel a bit familiar.

Audiosurf was the spark for all of this. Actually no it was Sam & Max Episode 4, which was given away free through Steam (meaning I had to download steam) and I still haven’t played. It popped my cherry in regards to downloading and paying for PC games. I’ve done it with music a few times, and after initially thinking it was a bad idea, missing out on the convenience of CDs and the appeal of physically owning something, the truth is that it’s meant my cds can all be boxed away while I listen to everything either on my mp3 player (or phone) or on my computer. Thank’s to Sam & Max, Audiosurf, and even the Virtual Console/Live Arcade/PSN downloading games is a lot more appealing.

I checked the specs of my computer against Half-Life 2 out of sheer boredom, and then bought the Orange Box off Steam out of sheer drunken consumerism. Within hours I’d grabbed hold of Quake 4, Painkiller and Fallout 2 (which I don’t think works), not all the latest and greatest but they have (especially HL2) been dominating my gaming time.

So I’ve returned to an old flame and everything’s rosey. Except that already I’m thinking about upgrading my graphics card, I don’t need to but wouldn’t it be nice to play Crysis at something like a high spec. I’m not sure how well by computer will run the upcoming Alan Wake and Fallout 3, the only 2 games coming to PC I give a shit about.

And that’s the crux of my problem. I bought the PC as an internet, music player, video watcher, Football Manager, Word machine, if I won’t the high end gaming experience I should have spent more, especially as I’m already used to having all the settings on max. but then what is there out there? Really, beyond the games I’ve already mentioned, plus maybe Dreamfall (which i could just buy on xbox for pennies), the upcoming months are as barren for me.

The blessing is that I’ve more than enough to keep me going until christmas, across all formats

Chou Anarchy

You may or may not have heard of the Hanabi festival. For those that haven’t rather than being of some religious or cultural importance, it’s actually the slightly misleading name Nintendo give the brief stint where they release import games on the Virtual Console.

Last time round the festival saw the release of the likes of Super Mario (The Lost Levels) and Sin & Punishment. This time around they standard of releases are a little more questionable. Among them is a Pool game (that is supposedly quite good), Puyo Pop 2 and Columns 2. It’s not that the games are bad, just not the sought after import titles you’d hope for.

We do however get a couple of games of note, to me at least. The ever awesome Metal Slug makes an appearance not 12 months after SNK said that their big franchises wouldn’t be coming over all that quickly. I’m not complaining, but we’ve seen Fatal Fury already, and now this, I guess it might have had something to do with the Anthologies of both they released. Anyway Metal Slug may actually be my all time favourite game, so even though I have it on the Saturn and on the Anthology I’ve caved and set it to download. Unfortunately the game isn’t a perfect translation as it runs in 50hz, add to that that the Saturn version isn’t quite arcade perfect and the Anthology version has stupid controls and it looks like this wont be the last version of the game I buy.

My attitude with the VC (Virtual Console, not Vietcong)is that it’s a good way to have your favourite games ready when you turn your console on, which covers Metal Slug, but also that it’s a good way to try games you’d previously missed out on. Which is where Chou Aniki comes in.

Again for those who haven’t heard of the Chou Aniki series what you’ve missed out on are various Parodius style side-scrolling shooters (and a bizarro shooty fightery thing) that rate as among the gayest games ever created. Granted that DS game where you have to towel off effeminate teenage boys is probably the current holder of the title but that’s a different kind of gay. Chou Aniki is pure camp and genuinely funny at points.

A lot of what’s been written about the game recently has been in defence of it, that this particular game is not as full on as its sequels, and that at it’s core it’s a good game that’s worth playing. There are also concerns about the reactions the game has been getting, I’ve seen a few posts saying things like Nintendo are destroying the Virtual Console/children’s innocence by releasing the game, and without wanting to pander to a stereotype a few Americans saying they don’t want this to get a release over there. In the interest of balance I will just add that the worst posts I’ve read regarding Chou Aniki’s release have come from Eurogamer.

I really don’t get this negative reaction, and at first didn’t believe it existed. Before I read any of the repulsed comments I read blog posts where people were rallying against the nay sayers, imploring people to give the game a try and to stop being homophobic. Until tonight I thought they were just barking in the dark, but there really does seem to have been a extreme, if low key reaction to the games release by some.

I know that there’s a chance that the posters are quite young, there’s no way to tell peoples age just by reading a post but it’s fair to say that the younger you are the more insecure you’re going to be around the issue of homosexuality. It’s understandable I guess, from what I can remember it was more about what would be said about you rather than any deep seated issues you personally had, hence why as you get older and peer pressure becomes less of a factor you chill out a bit.

That being said let me just spell this out for people because it’s not been said enough on the topics I’ve read. If your refusing to buy this game on the grounds that it’s “weird” then you might need to take a look at yourself. The game’s a pretty standard shooter, now if you don’t like shooters then fair enough, but if it’s the games subject matter that’s making you refuse to give it a chance then maybe there’s a question to ask? I can understand it not appealing to everyone and that’s not what I’m talking about, the over the top humour is exactly why I’m interested in it, but if that’s not something you like then that’s fair enough.

My main problem is that when people state that they wont be buying the game because it’s disgusting etc, that they’re not met with more derision. If people don’t want to buy the game, or even play the game that’s fine, but to not do so because it’s gay is simply homophobic and idiotic. I know shouting someone down for not being open minded is ironic but we shouldn’t just shrug as though it’s ok. It doesn’t matter if their opinion has religious grounding or just based on some misguided loathing, they are still hating the game because of their prejudices against a social group. It’d be like hating on the possibly upcoming Holocaust game because it’s Jewish centric, or hating that Christian rapture game because of the Christians rather than its misguided ‘kill everyone’ game mechanic.

I really don’t get homophobia at all, even when it’s based in religion. If you’re going to pick some obscure line to live by then maybe you should man up and live by the rest of the bible too?

Days 6 & 7:- 4-STAR BABY!!!

So I didn’t update yesterday,t heres a good reason for that, I only got to play one mission. I did however make some more progress last night, and had a bit of old-skool GTA fun too.

The game still continues to impress and entertain, but I do still notice the same problems cropping up again and again, how anyone can think this game deserves a straight out 10/10 is beyond me because of these problems, but thats another debate for another time. I have heard some of the problems I’m having with the game might be fixed via me clearing the 360’s cache as some of the layer pop-up has begun to get really bad the more I play, so I’ll give that a try.

I mentioned above that I’d had some old-skool GTA fun, what I mean by this is that I got into the airport (not hard at all, and had a drive round, then noticed my map flashing, looked up in the top right corner and I had an automatic 4-star wanted level! Looked back at my map and noticed aload of of small flashing lights headed in my direction, turned the camera to look for them, sure enough there they were, a whole swarm of police cars and armored vans, so I tried to make my escape. This led to an epic car chase which seemed to last around half an hour in real-world time, and about 5 hours in-game time. It involved me changing my car 3 times, the first time after rolling it onto the roof after the cops had shot out all my tyres and I was driving on just the rims, the second time I got stuck between a pillar and a building (I’d used a big 4x4 vehicle). I managed to shake them by heading to the funfair area of Hove, it was pretty damn good fun and I managed to get 50 achievement points for avoiding being caught or killed!

I’ve met a few new characters, Brucie an entrepreneur come steroid pumping nut job whos funnier the more time you spend with him, Manny, a man “from the street trying to get rid of all the shit from the street” (sort of in his own words) although he seems to be in it more for the money and fame, and lastly a duo of Elizibeta, a big Afro-American woman and Packie, a bit of a druggie. All of the characters are entertaining in their own way, even if some are more annoying than others, but Brucie and Little Jacob aside, theres been no one truly memorable from the cast (excluding Niko who is incredibly, and suprisingly, likable).

Day 5:- Stand-Off

Didn’t really play a whole lot last night, Charly wanted to play on the 360 so I spent alot of the night playing Team Fortress 2 (which is also a fantastic game).

I did however, spend most of my time just having fun. I found a bridge that was supposedly being constructed in the Bohan region of the city, whilst driving along, segments were missing but some had platforms bridging the gaps and others had ramps, I decided to go for it in the sedan I was driving, cleared the first jump but landed wrong to carry my speed through the second jump, I’m thinking I might have to get a PCJ-600 and give it another try tonight, see if it leads anywhere.

I also heard Ricky Gervais on the radio station WKTT, I’ve heard he’s on the TV in your apartment, but aside from watching The Men’s Room and Republican Space Rangers. I really do not understand all the fuss surrounding Gervais, he comes across as an arrogant prick, both whilst in “character” on The Office and Extra’s and also when doing his stand-up or in interviews and even when he appeared on The Simpsons, terrible comedian and as soon as I heard his voice on WKTT I turned back over to Liberty Radio to listen to some classic rock.

Before switching off I had a bit of fun with the Police, after doing a mission for Brucie (the first one he assigns you) I’d caused a fair bit of havoc, blowing up the car I’d been chasing along with my own and killing a fair few people. The doughnut eating cop was stood nearby and witness me running off, just my luck that this would be one of those occassions that there wasn’t a single car nearby for me to steal, so I shot the cop, hoping this would buy me sometime to head down an alleyway and get a car to escape. I got a car, but immediatly ran over a cop, managed to get on the freeway and headed back to Bohan with the Police in tow, couldn’t really shake them on there and when I got to the toll booth there was a couple of cars weaiting for me, I hit them, killed another cop and ended up having armoured police cars chasing me.

I managed to hole myself up in an abandoned and derelict office block on the top floor with the helicoptor circling, occasionally with a bunch of cops making their way up the stairs, I had a gun fight, waited a while, then made my way down to the floor below me, think I could make a slow attempt to escape, after all, I could get out anywhere on the ground floor, even though the radar seemed to show about 7 cop cars around the building. So on the first floor I’m behind a pilllar, helicopter still circling, police still making their way to try and catch me, I clear a few and decide it was make or break time. Unfortunately as I was heading down the stairs another wave of coppers arrived and all of them filled me with lead, the next thing I know, its daylight and I’m stood outside the hospital…

Day 4:- Dagnabbit

Wow, is it Day 4 already? Didn’t play as much yesterday as I had Wednesday and Thursday, purely because my daughter wasn’t at pre-school so wasn’t able to get that session in during the day. Got some time in in the evening though, although not quite as much as I’d of liked. But most of what I did was the story driven stuff, and boy have things changed since the events that took place on Thursday. I’ll go into those in a little while though.

I’ve had a couple of problems begin to crop up with the game, the most worrying of which were 2 Disc Read Errors, one on Thursday night the other last night, although I kind of saw both coming. Thursday night I went to go to the apartment to save, opened the door to the building (so coming in from the street) and inside looked like a neon purple and yellow splatter painting, no idea why, I stepped in and Niko began to just fall, then everything went black and “Liberty” popped up on the bottom right of the screen, then I was back in the street again, in the alleyway behind the building, kind of like put a no clip cheat in there and walked through the building. So I ran back round, inside the building was fine, saved made my way back out to the street then the blade saying “Your disc is dirty or damaged” popped up. Last nights was very surreal. Again, I went to save, inside the actual apartment there was no furniture or pictures on the wall, it was literally a bare bones room, even so, it recognised that there should be furniture in the room and as I pressed Y for Niko to lay down for me to save everything popped back into the room. Saved, left for the street again, something was wrong, the colours looked like they’d been washed a couple of hundred times, for example, the yellow cabs were a dirty white. All the colours were like this, except the red lights on the backs of the cars, it was like that scene near the start of Schindlers List when the Nazi’s are searching for the Jewish people and its all in black & white except for the one little girl wearing a red coat, this went on for a little while and rather than turning the console off and loading back up again I carried on, it wasn’t until I got to Faustin’s place that I got the Disc Read Error again.

This wasn’t all however, but this is definetly something that can be pointed at the game and not my console or the disc. When you’re out drinking (which I’ve been doing a bit with Little Jacob, whos hilairious when drunk!!) and you go over to a car, be it to get in the back of a cab or to attempt to drive, as soon as you press Y, Niko and whoever is with you will begin to walk normally. It’s not something thats a big issue, its just a bit jarring as the world is otherwise incredibly believable. I’ve had a couple of funny glitches too, I was driving around and was coming out of Faustin’s neighbourhood (through the part with the cop booth) as came from under the bridge, a bus fell out of the sky, right on top of my convertable and killed me, and another time I went drinking with Michelle, came out of the bar, she hadn’t been drinking it seems, as she wasn’t staggering around and the characters made note of this (Niko mentioned something about drinking her drinks), I tried to steal an SUV to drive her home, but was trying to take the car from the passenger side, which isn’t normally a problem. Anyhow, Niko pulled the door open and fell over, odd considering he behaves normally during this animation, so whilst I was on the floor, Michelle pulled the passenger out and got in the car, she’d effectively stolen the car for me!

With these issues out of the way, its time to move onto what I did yesterday, which was pretty much story exclusive. So, if you haven’t reached the safe house in Bohan just yet, you might want to stop reading.

Basically, the shit has really hit the fan. Faustin asked me to kill this guy, turns out this guy is his bosses son or something, his boss is pissed off, understandably, and trying to pick up the pieces, Dimitri tells me in order to make things right, I need to kill Faustin. Holy shit thats heavy!

I do as I’m told, then I get a call from Dimitri to meet him at a warehouse to get my pay, Little Jacob calls to see how things are going, he hears whats happened, and his paranoid state gets the better of him. Too much weed I’m thinking, he wants to go with. I meet him at the warehouse, sure enough he’s right, Dimitri is a double crossing bastard, fucking scum-bag, I know Faustin was a bit of a nut-job, but I actually quite liked him! Anyway, Dimitri is in league with the people Niko was working for back in Russia. A gun fight ensues, cops get involved, I shake them, drop Jacob off back at home, and Roman calls, he’s scared. I find him, go to take him home, the joints on fire, so is his cab rank, and we’re on the run. Christ almighty, the games got heavy, and incredibly interesting, I can’t wait till tonight to play some more! Although I think I may be involved in some Team Fortress 2 tonight…

Day 3:- Wha’gwan?

Last night met a couple of new characters, both of which have small jobs you can do at any ppoint that don’t seem to be story driven. First off was Little Jacob’s mate Madman. Like Jacob, he’s a drug dealing, fast slang talking black man, who is even more difficult to understand than Jacob is. In fact you have to use Jacob to translate what Madman’s saying, leading to Niko often looking a liltte lost and confused, which is actually very funny. The other new guy is Brucie, a body building, steroid pumping car mechanic, I’ve not really spoken with him enough to get an impression of him, but I do know Madman and Jacob are my favourite characters so far!

So yesterday I decided to unfold the games map and start to see some of the sites of the area of Liberty City open to me. First stop was the Triangle Club, a strip-joint in Bohan, a small Island in the northeast, the girls were a bit tacky looking and have black tape over their nipples, but hey, Niko didn’t complain. After leaving the Triangle Club I thought Niko might be a bit frustrated, so took him to pick up a prostitute, drove her down a side alley and was given three different prices, $20, $50 or $70, (You can probably guess what each one gets you). I took the $70 option and the car begun to bounce, remembering you could rotate the camera I discovered you could see pretty much what was going on, I thought, when initially picking her up, that the windows might steam up or something. She did stay fully clothed though. Later on Roman wanted to go to the strip club too, so I took him and whilst there accidentally wandered up onto the stage which resulted in all the girls running out the club screaming and the bouncers trying to have a punch up with me, but I just ignored them and strolled out to my car casually with Roman behind me and I took him back home.

I also went to the Internet Cafe (Tw@ lol) for the first time, had a look at their dating pages and theres a blurred out photo of a 34 year old woman thats been placed into witness protection, the shape of the face and hair in the photo is quite similar to Michelle, and with all the questions she asks about Roman, Niko and “bad people” I’m beginning to have suspicions about her, still, I won’t stop taking her out on dates, which I also did last night, we went to play darts, I won my first game of anything against her (she’s beaten me at both bowling and pool now). I also went out drinking with Jacob, which was just as funny as when I went with Roman, mostly because Jacob, a heavy spliff smoker, seemed to believe he was going to die, then started walking in the opposite direction to where we were go, so I had to stumble back to get him.

So 3 days in, I’m still highly enjoying this, I’ve not gone on any rampages like I normally do with GTA games, this iteration seems to encourage you to improve your social links and go on missions more than the other games in the series did, it feels more focused, which is something I actually quite like as I was beginning to get bored of the “Do absolutely anything you want” mindset that the genre has surrounding it.