Late to the Party #3 - Gee Tee Ay Musing

Rostopher is usually...

#3 - Gee Tee Ay Musing

Spoilers throughout. You have been warned.

So it has come to pass - Rockstar's generational opus is upon us, as may have been hinted at ever so slightly in the last issue. And now, I've had an opportunity to play it! Shocker, I know, but it seems curiously necessary to point out that now, I have actually played the game. Well, most of it. It's just that a lot of the cricism came way to early for people to have actually played through the whole thing. Just throwing that out that.

Any-bally-hoo, we'll start with a micro-review, and about half-way through it, we'll move on to the actual meat of the matter, because...well, that's where it is: half-way through a review! 

 

GTA V is a really quite brilliant game. On the technical side, it's hugely impressive, particularly given that it's currently running on 8-year-old hardware. The fidelity of the world is the highlight - a self-contained, satirical snapshot of modern American society. Los Santos' rotten, corrupt heart hidden beneath a sheen of sunshine, fast cars and palm trees; Sandy Shores, a blistering, dust-covered hickville...sorry, 'home of rural Americans'; Grapeseed, your quiet little whitebread town; and Paleto Bay, your tiny beach community. Despite the triple-protagonist gimmick eliminating their necessity, you'll still find yourself setting out on drives from one mission to another, or indeed from nowhere to nowhere else. 

Allow me to paint a picture - and in no way will it do justice to the majesty of it, but I'll do my damn best.

I had been messing about on a jetski as Michael, the mobster archetype protagonist, and found myself in Paleto Bay just as the sun set over the water. I beached the jetski, and wandered into town, locating a suitable unmanned vehicle and performing the titular crime. The radio tunes in to a station playing some impressively smooth jazz, and I pull into the local garage to clean the car up. I checked my map, and saw that Michael's next mission was back at his house in Rockford Hills, a wealthy suburb in north Los Santos. I set my sat-nav marker, and set off, the route carrying me along the west coast of San Andreas, chasing the sun as she hid herself beneath the horizon. On the cusp of her disappearing, I vanish into the tunnel that takes you underneath Fort Zancudo, and emerge into the night. Streetlights, brake-lights and headlights streak past as I cross the bridge over Lago Zancudo, and I take the turn-off onto Route 68, clambering steadily uphill and then heading down into the winding, challenging road through Tongva Valley. The hills either side suddenly give way, and I'm greeting by the glistening, festering, neon-glinting jewel that is Los Santos, the full moon hovering low over her, welcoming me back.

Something like this. Only with more smooth jazz.

I pulled over.

Sounds good, no? This is Rockstar's true achievement with this piece of software - a living, breathing, dynamic, infinitely intriguing landscape to explore. It's literally jaw-dropping.

Controls-wise - whilst a bit fiddly to get to grips with in some scenarios, and not without occasional frustrations - are a slick hybridisation of three distinct gameplay types (namely third-person action, driving and piloting), and they're each satisfying enough that you can forgive some occasional control quirks. On top of the astounding diversity of stuff that you can mess around with - guns, bombs, cars, planes, bikes, boats, frikkin' submarines, and yes, the list goes on after 'frikkin submarines' - there's an outrageously deep veneer of customisation.

It's quite simply the most technically accomplished sandbox game released this generation, and a perfect generational swansong - showcasing exactly what the supposedly aging hardware in the Xbox 360 and PS3 was capable of all along.

But it's in the story-telling, and its unexpectedly varied interpretation that we're going to be dwelling on for the rest of this piece.

As you are probably aware, Grand Theft Auto is gaming's grand crime saga - all set in the same fictional, twisted version of America, they tell tales of nobodies achieving the American dream rather more violently and sordidly than strictly necessary. This rodeo is a little different, primarily in that there are no less than three protagonists - which, in absolute truth, was the next logical step in GTA's evolution. But there's also the fact that all three are wash-ups, in their own way, rather than nobodies. Franklin, a sardonic gang-banger who alienates everyone around him; Michael, a witness-protected ex-bank robber whose lack of empathy is causing his family life to fall apart; and Trevor, a certifiably insane pseudo-Canadian redneck (yeah, get your head around that one!).

Their stories begin separate, but slowly intertwine as your progress through the game. You pull heists, run drugs, work for movie producers, and more, all in the name of making that sweet, sweet dollar.

The writing is great - sharp, acerbic and bitterly satirical, Dan Houser, Rupert Humphries and Micheal Unsworth emulate Parker and Stone as they tar everyone with the same brush. Celebrity culture, gang culture, nerd culture, corporate culture, capitalism, communism, conservatives, liberals, crap TV, rednecks, white trash, gangsters, psychologists - everything is torn asunder, revealing corrupt, festering hearts within each by way of an elegant, biting (and occasionally delightfully juvenile) sense of humour.

But most intriguingly of all, the game carries a fairly broad, blaring message, written in neon lights as glorious as Los Santos' nightscape:

This shit don't pay off. 

Not in the long run. Heists go bad, loyalties are questioned, terrifying murderers (or, as they're more commonly known, governments) irreversibly pissed off. The only way to actually earn the stacks of cash required to buy up property in the game is to honestly invest - and dishonestly skew, if so inclined - in the virtual stock market it presents.

Which makes those decrying it for corrupting our minds, for being morally bankrupt, quite odd indeed. I'm going to say it - did these people actually play the game? Did they take it in as a whole?

Is it the torture? It's the torture isn't it? Yeah, I thought you might say that. It's a fallacy, though. Sure, if you strip out every ounce of context, and presented me with a game that was literally just the torture part of the scene, I'd question your sanity, based on the fact that the barely interactive three-minute cinematic that you have there doesn't qualify as a 'game' in any sense of the word, saying nothing of its grimy, grotesque content.

But here's the thing - taken as a whole, Trevor is presented from the get-go as an unhinged psychopath.  

There's not a single shred of moral consistency to his actions, from his fluctuating approach to the value of human life, to his catastrophic mood swings (he loses his rag at the mere mention of the word 'motherfucker'), to his flip-flopping between embracing and vilifying his Canadian-tinged accent.

Heck, he's the closest thing the story has to a main antagonist, in story populated solely by antagonistic figures. You are playing as the villain when you engage in the torture scene - it's not glamourised, it's not fun, and the disturbing look of glee in Trevor's eyes is a technical marvel. It's meant to disgust you - that's what the scene wanted you to feel. 

It means you're a good person - give yourself a pat on the back!

This look glamourous to you? Then you need help, my friend.

Then there's the broader point - the torture is contained within a segment whereby the torture is enacted on behalf of the 'FIB' (switching the letters! Subtle!), and it ostensibly extracts information about a high-value terrorist target. The victim himself all but admits that he's telling them anything to get them to stop. Yet the FIB act on the information, issuing the order to the cold, heartless Michael to execute the target, without a second thought given. By anyone. The scene in its entirety decries this method of 'warfare'. 

The thing is, the one thing that I actually did think crossed the line hasn't been touched upon at all in mainstream media. The Escapist noted it in their fairly critical review of the game - a sequence wherein you unknowingly plant a bomb in the prototype of a smartphone about to be presented at a press conference, and proceed to detonate it on national television. I honestly went in expecting an ingenious, humiliating technological prank, not a brazen act of terrorism. This coupled with the fact that it's literally the only crime in the game with no risk of failure (a preceeding 'stealth' section is not challenging in the slightest) or any ramifications down the line makes it all the more unsettling. Yet the denouncement of torture is what gets us?

These're two ten-minute sections of a 25-hour-plus game. Did it attack the issues a little too bluntly? Maybe, but this is no reason to renounce the game unto Satan. 

It doesn't cross the line any more than any other media portraying torture, violence or depravity. I mean come on! We had a collective critical aneurism at the sheer bold brilliance of a scene that features a pregnant woman getting stabbed repeatedly in the belly in Game of Thrones. We must afford Grand Theft Auto the courtesy of being regarded on the same intellectual level, surely?

Late to the Party #2 - Don't Hate the Game, Hate the Human

Rostopher is usually...

#2 - Don't Hate the Game, Hate the Human

So once again, Grand Theft Auto has drudged up the age-old 'video games are corrupting our souls!' argument. It's sad that the BBC, the Daily bleedin' Mirror (who I will not even dignify with a backlink. Google it), and even The Escapist felt the need to stoke that particular fire, lending credence to the fact that the attack in London was motivated by a need to acquire specifically GTA V; instead of, y'know, being a crime of happenstance where the individuals were after anything of value that the victim happened to be carrying. Like his phone. And his wallet. Both of which were also taken in the attack. But no, GTA V is crowbarred into the headline, because 'vidya garms cores violins!!!1111'.

However, in a surprise twist, I'm going to open(-ish) by saying something that may initially seem like I'm contradicting myself: violent video games do affect us.

Stay with me. I would follow up by saying: 'in the same way that literally anything else violent affects us'. It's true - our advanced thinkerboxes are but one facet of our dominance of planet Earth; we're also fully capable of some really rather imaginative methods of offing other creatures, including each other. If one of us does snap and decide to go postal, are we going to use the violence that we've personally witnessed as reference? You bet we are. There are, after all, no true originals left! But it's in the same way that we might reference, say, a funny line from a movie when we're trying to impress someone (or is that just me?).

The actual question that we should be asking ourselves is whether or not video games are a factor in the snap itself. The answer is a resounding no. (Imagine it echoing in a cathedral; that's the sort of resounding I'm going for.)

Take Sandy Hook, when the media attempted to shoe-horn Call of Duty in as the scapegoat. But Adam Lanza was a deeply troubled person - the autistic son of a woman who was a gun enthusiast and 'apocalypse preperationist', if tales told are true. The already anti-social shut-in was probably not imbued with any sense of love for his fellow man, and he learned to shoot from his mother, in a rifle range in their basement; not from a video game - the notion of which is fundamentally ridiculous:

Essentially the same device! Right?

When you look at each and every other case of this happening, the perpetrators are motivated by their own personal psychosis. The denouement of each inevitably has shades of whatever violent media they took in, but to blame video games - or films, or books, or rap music, or whatever else - is to ignore the actual problem.

Now, maybe those arsehole kids were specifically targeting that poor guy in London for his copy of GTA - there're several plausible narratives that see this being the case. 

But video games are a macguffin in every single one. Replace videogames with 'a kitten'. (I know it's silly, but I'm making a point, dammit!) Do you blame the kitten for the attack? Or do you blame an irrational and violent response to a need to have something that's otherwise unavailable? 

The problem is that we as human beings seek a conclusive answer to fucking everything. We need one big answer enshrined in stone, held aloft by some dude with a beard on a mountain as thunder cracks behind him. But the problem with the random attacks issue is that there is no single explanation for all of them. Each case is disquietingly unique, but we pounce on the easiest common thread to blame - the one that's seen as most inconsequential - whilst failing to recognise the single thing that they all do have in common: humans. We just won't accept that sometimes, people do really awful shit to other people, for their own reasons. 

Dowwwwwner! Here's the kitten:

How could you blame this?! YOU HAVE NO SOUL!!!

Honestly, though? I would agree that there is perhaps an over-abundance of violence in video-games these days. It's an art-form in the final throes of a rebellious adolescence, over-saturated with boobs (hehehehe! Boobs! (I slapped myself, don't worry)) and aesthetisised violence. Of late, however, both the industry and gamers themselves have shown signs that they're growing up in their approach to both. But this is a separate issue - they still don't force people to vent their frustration with the world by shooting at it. 

I've been playing video games for a long damn while. Some of my earliest memories are of playing Snapper (a.k.a Pacman But Not Pacman) in gaudy 8-bit-o-vision on the BBC Micro with one of these fucking things:

The joysticks don't even auto-centre. That's how old-school we're talking.

But as the popular greetings card - and one of my t-shirts! - points out, none of us are flitting about dark rooms as we chase ghosts, pop pills and listen to repetitive electronic music! Okay...maybe not none of us...

And heck, I'm an avid shooter fan - but I've only operated a firearm for a grand total of about 36 minutes (three separate occasions; none of which I actually had a choice in, I would add). It is an experience that I never, ever wish to repeat - the prospect of wielding an actual physical object designed to end another human's life repels me completely. 

But the rush of pulling off a perfect strafing run on the enemy team in an attack helicopter in Battlefield? Of silently taking out a platoon of oblivious security guards in Splinter Cell? Sign me up! Why? Because it's all the associated adrenaline that stems from the aggressive nature of our species, but none of the risk of - or indeed actual - death.

If anything, anything at all, violent video games - and other violent media where we can get our fix of this sort of rush - are healthy and cathartic to indulge in. A way of reconciling the scholar with the savage, without a single drop of blood spilled. And who knows? Maybe James Wan and Eli Roth would be out there right now, enacting the awful things they thought up for the Saw and Hostel movies if the movie industry didn't exist. Instead, they made a film that let the rest of us closet psychopaths - that's all of us, by the by, and I'm using the term in the colloquial sense, before any psychologists pounce on me! - get our fix. Thanks guys!

But the out-and-proud psychopaths (again, colloquial) who perform these senseless acts of violence ultimately just hate other humans - however they arrive there, that's their conclusion. We should send that hate right back at them, not at an innocent kitten. I mean goat. I mean...ah fuck it, you know what I mean. To demonise something that brings enjoyment, comfort, and health benefits to millions of people the world over because of one arsehole who played one video game one time is just...just...

...really fucking DUMB.

Peace, y'all!

Max Payne 3 Review

Sitting, as we are, in a year of long-awaiting entertainment - The Dark Knight Rises, Diablo 3, Halo 4,  The Avengers, Prometheus...the list goes on -  it's perhaps appropriate that one of the best games to saunter up is among their number.

Originally set for release in 2009, it was jostled about for a while - mostly thanks to a 'it'll be done when it's done' attitude - and has finally hit a console near you, and it comes with a heavy dose of history on its shoulders.

If you haven't played the first two Max Payne games, you genuinely missed out - the original is a prototype for the modern action game, with tight, beautifully responsive action wrapped in a gorgeously written story, told beautifully and intruigingly through the medium of graphic novel interludes, rather than cutscenes. It was a hallmark in cinematic gaming, bringing the concept of bullet time into gaming, and executing it flawlessly, with the gameplay not just looking great - bullets whizzing about your head in slow motion, sending your own right back as you fought your way through fantastically realised environments - but feeling great, with slick controls, a varied arsenal, and a satisfying difficulty curve keeping you engaged from start to finish.

The second, subtitled 'The Fall of Max Payne', continued the trend, coupling an escalating story - including a romance with what is still one of the best female co-leads any medium of story-telling has produced - with for-the-time incredible graphics, and a beautifully weighted adaptive difficulty system, all alongside the outrageously tight shooting mechanics that made the first so good. All of this meant that the franchise found its way into the 'fondly regarded' section of many a memory warehouse, and this was only mildly tainted by that appalling cinematic entry. 

So along rumbles Max Payne 3. Gone are the original developers and writers - Remedy Entertainment and Sam Lake respectively - in are some new kids on the block. Or rather, some old veterans with a shotgun on the porch: Rockstar and Sam Houser. It's a shift in creative team that may make some wary, and others excited, but either way, it's actually a match made in heaven.

Shifting the story forward in real time, it picks up with Max a now-aged ex-cop, drowning his guilt and sorrow in bottle after bottle of whatever alchohol is closest to hand, and a near-lethal daily dose of painkillers, that - thanks to our gameplay habits in the first two games - he's now addicted to. After a run-in with the Punchinellos - ah yes, the first act villains from the other two! - Max ends up working for a rich Brazilian family in what was to be a cake walk, guarding their brattish, drunken children from...well, nothing. But as ever, things never seem to go right when Max is involved, and a botched kidnapping attempt is the catalyst that creates a wave of violence and death, leaving a trail of bodies straight to the heart of the endemic corruption in Sao Paulo.

The shift in tone from the dark, snow-draped visuals of New York to the brighter asthetic of sunny Brazil is handled really rather well, with the first and second acts juxtaposing the two design ethics before shifting into a gloriously sun-kissed final act that, coupled with the story's noir groundings, serves to give the game a vibe similar to that of the late Tony Scott's opus, Man on Fire - darkness that simply cannot be overwhelmed by the light, no matter how bright and heavily armed.

This is all down to Houser's writing - and to make a bold statement, if video games have anything even vaguely close to a Quentin Tarantino, Houser is it. He's a man who understands video-games, who's grown up with them and he rides a fine balance between a gritty tale, seriously told and a knowing pastiche of both the games that preceeded it. Max's dialogue in particular is fantastically written

In terms of execution, the game is close to flawless. Characters look great without delving into the uncanny valley that LA Noire so comfortable resided in, and the detail in the animation, along with the fluidity of the transitions, is genuinely astonishing. Changes in expression this subtle are something of a rarity in video games, and this was done without that fancy facial capture tech that practically broke Team Bondi in half as they tried to get it working. The physics engine is also beautifully integrated with the Euphoria animation system, making for environmental interactions from both Max and the other characters that is rarely the same twice, with glass smashing realistically as you plough through it head first, then beer bottles and wine glasses flying elegantly aside as you slide along a bartop, mowing down a roomful of bad guys as you go, even as you haul yourself back onto your feet.

Gameplay is split between the above-mentioned running-gunning-and-Shoot-Dodging-in-slow-motion that is the series' hallmark, and the new addition of scripted set pieces that take a page from Wanted: Weapons of Fate's book when it comes to quick-time events.

But perhaps the most impressive technical achievement on display here is Max himself. Not some static, ever-regenerating man/tank hybrid - no, instead, he's a character that actual changes as things happen to him. Bullet wounds persist through cutscenes in each chapter, and Max noticeably starts moving slower the more damage he takes.

This creates an interesting dynamic in the controls - Rockstars mastery of this particular aspect of making games means that it actually feels like you're controlling a middle-aged, slightly drunk, slightly fat ex-cop, with the trademark Shoot Dodge (yes, apparently we have to capitalise that as well...) and Bullet Time being more or less his only edge. This may seem like an odd compliment - 'who want's to feel that?', I hear you ask - but it creates an attachment to the character that goes beyond him simply being a well-written, fleshed out human being. Then there's the fact that Shoot Dodging has a more than reasonable number of great moments, peppered with moments of intentional comedy, and the odd minor irritation when you manage to break the physics, or get filled with holes due to your being lying on the ground out in the open, desperately scrambling to your feet.

This serves to make an interesting tactical choice in game - there's a conflict between looking, to coin a phrase, 'pretty fucking awesome', and the actual practicality of the Shoot Dodge, encouraging you to find the incredibly satisfying midpoint between diving about like a mad-man and the more tactical, cover-based aspects of the gameplay.

If there are problems with the game, they're three-fold. First, there's the obnoxiously long loading times - I only have the Xbox version for reference, but even after installing the game onto the hard disk, each chapter is broken up by an excrutiatingly long loading sequence, and it serves to break the flow of the story rather ferociously. It's lucky that the game is very much worth waiting for, otherwise it might've been verging on a deal-breaker. It's not so bad on your first play through, but when it comes time to hit New York Minute mode, and the multiplayer, the long waits for the action aren't particularly welcome. It also fails to change the formula in any particularly meaningful way - it's still you and your arsenal against wave after wave of baddies, and it does start to get a tiny bit repetitive towards the end. There're also three rather frustrating 'boss battles', that didn't really need to be in there, but the adaptive difficulty thankfully makes these pass quickly.

Overall, this is an experience not to be missed. A writer who's never produced better, coupled with a studio at the absolute top of their game artistically and technically, it's moving, heart-pounding, often funny and above all, entirely absorbing, drawing you in to a sleazy world of corruption, violence and tragedy, with Max a broken guardian angel, giving one last stab at dishing out some justice in an unfair world that seems to be set against him. It's a sight to behold, and if you only manage to play one game this year, make it this one.

I lost 2 stone!

But alas, it was only in hair. Yes, after nearly 18 months of growing my ridiculous barnet, I've had to bite the bullet and go in to the dreaded hair-dressers. The nice Polish lady did snigger at me when I told her I did cut it myself a couple of times before she went to town with a pair of scissors and a water-spray-can-thing. 20 minutes later, I look like a Lego man - to be expected: no hair-cut looks instantly right on my bonce for whatever reason. Little bit of hair gel and it'll be right as rain - just for the moment it looks a bit odd.

I have also lost quite a bit of weight - six stone in 14 months no less - which was rather impressive. I'm now a shapely 16 stone and XL, instead of a 22 stone, XXXL monster. Yay! Still classed as 'Overweight' by the ridiculous scale of BMI, but I care so little about that I could genuinely pass out.

Bought and played Modern Warfare 2. Well, I say 'bought' - I didn't actually hand over any money for it. Gamestation were doing a deal whereby you traded in 2 games from a big list, and get MW2 for £4.99. I traded in 3 games, and hey presto, 3 games I don't play any more (Borderlands, CoD4, The Orange Box) becomes one glorious paragon of virtual entertainment.

The campaign is - difficult though this thought may be - infinitely superior to the previous installment. Everything about it has been kicked up a notch, and for those of us who've played the last one, that's really saying something. There's a particular moment in Call of Duty 4, and for sake of avoiding spoilers, we shall call it The Scene, wherein you are inside the head of a man who's more or less in the epicentre of a nuclear blast. Harrowing, haunting and meaningful, it was one of the stand-out moments of gaming in 2007. Modern Warfare 2 matches that intensity at least five times during the campaign.

First there's the highly controversial level in which you watch - or indeed partake, if that floats your boat - the massacre of innocent civilians. If your heartbeat is steady after its startling conclusion, you're not really human. Then there's a fantastic sequence in the snow of the Russian mountains involving ice-climbing and a snow mobile. Then there's the spectacular free-run across the roof of a Brazilian favela. Then there's the moment that you're winched to safety after rescuing a familiar face from the depths of a Russian prison. And finally, there's some good old-fashion movie referenes, most notable here being The Rock. Two sequences are more or less directly ripped off from Bay's seminal opus, but you can forgive them thanks to the sheer majesty that these two set pieces bring to the final few levels of the game.

Chances are that if you have any interest in the Call of Duty series at all, or indeed in FPSs in general, you've already got this. But if you're still on the fence - a piece of advice. Go out and buy it now. This is one of the most entertaining, harrowing and explosive adventures to have ever seen light on any platform. You do owe it to yourself.

Elsewhere...I start work on the 28th! Huzzah! Winter Wonderland again - so being cold and wet may well be the order of the day - but it's money. Yay! Handed in my contract and availability today with Fee, and hopefully we'll be able to score some extra work putting the place together. Fun times.

Can't think of anything else. So I'll leave it at that. Have fun, kiddies.

Lack of updatage...

So! Sorry about the utter lack of updatage. Had terrible bouts of insomnia as of late, and being tired isn't exactly the first state that I like to be in when I'm sitting at a computer screen trying to arrange my thoughts!

Pissing down with rain in Edinburgh at the moment - actually the first proper autumn rain we've had, and it's bloody November! The dripping on the scaffolding is infuriating, especially late at night, though that's not really the reason for my lack of sleep. Hardly helped though.

Also! Good news! I have a pseudo-job reviewing DVDs! Which is pretty cool. Big shout out to Last Broadcast for being kind enough to let me spout my madness on their website. Anyways, my first review was of Trinity, and that's been published, so head over here to have a read of that. Next up is Year One and The Wizard of Oz 70th Anniversary Edition, which should be posted tomorrow. Watch that space or indeed this space for linkage!

Reviewing Wizard of Oz was rather tricky, to be absolutely honest, and I'm not really sure that I pulled it off. It's a modern classic, for God's sake! People have written dissertations on this stuff! Well, whatever - as of tomorrow, my two cents will be added into the mix. And seeing as they're grounded in a childhood fascination with the film, I'm kinda worried they're a bit disjointed!

That's about it, really...I'm working on reviews on Up and Borderlands. Hopefully should have those up soon, though the Up one may dissappear thanks to my hearing my own damn opinions on a certain radio show! Annoying when someone beats you to the punch, even if it would hardly matter if I beat him to it - because people would believe him over me every time!

Anyways! Have fun in Internet Land. Remember - click your mouse three times to get the hell out of there.

Something weird from Halo

People who don't play Halo will not understand this, but I has having a poke through my service record and found a rather interesting stat:

That's right. I have not one, but two Plasma Pistol kills in social games. Surely this isn't possible?

Anyways, I know I promised an Up review, but we slept in and then we just just stayed in and watched House series 5. It was good. Should be going to the cinema tomorrow, though. Hopefully.

For now...if anyone can beat my two Plasma Pistol kills, I'd like to see it!

Harshness. Delicious harshness.

So yeah, I played Tomb Raider. Quite a harsh review, don't you think? Still, after my 70-billionth splatter-spike death, I just got a little bit frustrated with the whole thing and called it quits. It's the first game in quite a while that I didn't see through to completion, that's how dissapointed I was with it.

Still, all's well that ends well. Halo 3: ODST is still just as good as it always was, and the new maps for Halo 3 bring some variety to the mix, which is nice. Although they haven't actually managed to fix the matchmaking system yet, so me as a Colonel, I still drag in the Generals for whatever reason, making playing on Xbox Live a rather mixed experience.

Still haven't gotten my paws on a copy of Batman: Arkham Asylum, which I would very much like to do in the next few weeks, be it a rental or a flat out purchase. Unlikely to be the latter, due to my complete lack of moneys. Hopefully LoveFilm will be more than gracious enough to send it my way...that'd be nice.

Job hunt is still looking bad. Had an interview, which went well, but am yet to hear back from them, and it's nearly been a week, so I think that one can be considered scuppered. Unless they're one of those lethargic advertising companies who...y'know...do nothing. Unlikely, but could still happen...

As for everything else...well, that's going fine as well. Had a lazy Sunday today. Slept in until noon, then got up and went to get some Un-named But Highly Tasty Burger Place food. Then walked back home and we ate it whilst watching True Blood.

Speaking of which...True Blood! I've only seen the first episode so far, but I thoroughly enjoyed it - nice background mythology for the show, as well as great performances from all those involved. The creepy air that looms over ever scene is awesome, and I really like how despite barely looking different from humans, you can still tell which characters are the vampires and which aren't, especially when you know what to look for. Anyways, I'm enjoying that - so bring on the rest of the series.

That's it for now...laters.

Tomb Raider: Underworld Review

Tomb Raider: Underworld...you've heard of it, you've probably seen trailers for it. But please, for the love of Steve - spare yourself playing it. Get Anniversary. Revel in better story-telling of Core Design, coupled with the superior graphics brought along by Crystal Dynamics. Enjoy it. Because you will not enjoy this one.

Because somewhere along the line, Lara has acquired a whole load of flabby, messy crap, seemingly thrown into her games at random. The movement controls are still as unrefined as ever - Ben Croshaw's 'cow in a supermarket trolley' description is still the most apt - less precise even than the original Tomb Raider, and that was made in 1996! Considering how uneven it was in Anniversary and Legend, you'd've thought they'd address that. But no, they didn't. C'est la vie. At least they improved the graphics, right?

Now there's an interesting juxtaposition going on here. They've improved the environments - moving away from the 'blocks of equal length' mantra of level design to a much more organic and lush feel to the levels. It's a pity, then, that they didn't actually upgrade the movement system accordingly. There are times when a precision jump that should be more than doable for Lara is impossible, seeing as there's only two types of jump - forward a certain distance and up. You can't fine tune them at all, and the game doesn't bother to adapt the distance of your jump to the context of said jump, so a lot of the time, you'll find yourself sailing over the ledge you wanted to land on and plummeting to your death.

Yet another thing that hasn't seen improvement - yes, having Lara die if she falls more than 30 feet may be realistic, but do you know what else it is? Flow-breaking, and fucking annoying. Especially considering the still-terrible camera, and the fact that ledges that you can grab onto are almost indistinguishable from those that you can't. The other games had little pits beneath platform puzzles that - if you buggered up, which was rather inevitable - you fell into and had to climb back out again. This was an ingenious method of dealing with it - a puzzle within a puzzle, if you like - however, this concept is completely done away with in Underworld, with every single pit under a platform puzzle leading to instadeath and a reload to one of the not-frequent-enough checkpoints.

The combat system is still the worst part about it, though - enemies having tons of health (see how Crystal Dynamics sway from realistic to arcade-y in the blink of an eye!) - and fully all of the weapons don't fire quickly enough, nor have enough effect on the enemy to be satisfying to shoot. The adrenaline system is a fairly interesting idea, but the fact that it takes just that little bit longer to fill it up than it takes to kill the enemies you're presented with, coupled with the fact that if it's not full, it empties means that you'll rarely get to use it in a manner which compliments the flow of the game. You'll either acquire it just as you kill the final enemy, then you use it in a surprise attack on the next set of baddies, or indeed not acquire it at all. Which is frustrating, to say the least.

Then there's the enemies who have their bullshit-o-metres turned up to 11, unleashing attacks that knock off a third of your health, knock you off your feet and require you to take so much time to recover from that another attack is headed your way before you can even think about pulling the triggers to ward it off. You're gonna die in combat - badly and often. What's worse is that despite an array of moves that should work as dodges - various flips and rolls that Lara can do whilst in shooting mode - these are nearly impossible to use effectively. The camera comes in to haunt you once again, frequently making you unintentionally back into corners and thus get mauled by the giant lizards.

There are, however, some good things - the graphics are magnificent, with this stylised reality beautifully rendered, with top-notch lighting effects and ludicrously smooth animation creating a believable world that you can explore so long as you don't try anything fancy. Or...y'know...logical. The puzzles are as well-realised as ever - even if they do rely on the old games cliche of 'no, you can't just climb over the wall'. The story fits well with the rest of the series, and its turning dark does nothing but enhance the whole deal. The voice acting - on the whole, at least - is solid and interesting, and Keeley Hawes is the best thing about it with her sultry, roguish portrayal of Lara.

They've also taken the gaming industry's advice and more-or-less done away with the 'Press X to Not Die' quicktime events. Instead letting you decide to do so, and keeping the whole thing in game without cutting to a cutscene. For instance, when a large elevator-type-thing collapses under her feet, you can still move Lara around on it as it starts to tumble towards the ground. Moving up to the top, if you're quick you'll spot a magnetic ring that you can grapple onto, leaving the elevator thing in bitty shards at the bottom, and you hanging safely onto your grapple line. Sounds tough? Well, it would be if the game put it in full speed. But it helpfully slows down, giving you just about enough time to get it done before speeding up once again. A clever interpretation of the quicktime events, and they are to be commended for it.

It's just such a shame that despite raised stakes, Crystal Dynamics have dropped the ball on so many aspects of this one. It's even more of a disappointment given how much better Anniversary was than Legend - a similar step up was required here. I would say it's only worth it for the die-hard fans, but to be honest, I think I'm one of them - having played each iteration of the franchise, and completed all but Angel of Darkness. So I can't even reccomend it to them. Annoyingly, bitterly dissappointing.

Breakdown: Gameplay: Sloppy controls both for exploration and combat, combined with a terrible camera detract from superbly designed puzzles and some fantastic 'adrenaline moments'. 9/20 Graphics: Stunning environments and hugely detailed, motion-captured animation, albeit with the odd bit of slowdown, and some occasionally glitches. 18/20 Sound: The environmental and vocal work is top notch, but a lack of effort for the sound effects of the weapons is very noticable. 15/20 Value for Money: 12 hours of gameplay, although quite why you'd even consider playing it through again is beyond me. 10/20 Tilt: Haven't been this frustrated by a game in ages, both as a piece of art and as a game. 5/10

Total Score: 57%

W00t!

Just got 1000/1000 gamerscore on Halo ODST. Yes, I have too much time on my hands!

Woo - and indeed - hoo.

I has my internets back! Yay!

Saw that some cunts decided to troll my blog. Glad to see that the only attention I can gather is from some idiot bored in their living room. But some of us, right, have Analytics, right? And, well, some of us can tell exactly how long each visitor stayed on each page. Guess what? No visitors on the day of those comments actually stayed long enough to read the review! Hurray! Next time, arse-monkeys, try actually reading it before calling it shit. Not that I care that you think it's shit, but at least read it first, yeah?

Anyways, onto happier things. The new flat is marvelous - a little bigger than the old one, although there's less storage space overall, I fear. Especially considering my computer is currently perched more-or-less on a windowsill. But it's not exactly unstable, and the windows don't leak, which is a bonus. It's got gas, importantly, and it's in a really nice part of town, which is good. More or less the same part of town as the old one, really...but yeah, it's a good'un!

Played and completed Halo 3: ODST, and it was rather incredibly good. A very natural extension of Halo 3, and the various changes to the gameplay due to your being in an ODST's shoes and not a Spartan's are interesting, and more importantly, they're much, much tighter than Halo 3. The vehicle controls in particular have been very much improved. There're a few curious ommissions (no Xbox Live Matchmaking for Firefight? No Battle Rifle?), but overall it's yet another fantastic addition to the Halo canon, and very much a good sign that Bungie's creative reservoir has not yet been entirely tapped.

There's a big furore about the fact that it's very similar to Halo 3 in gameplay...and considering it began life as an expansion pack, I don't understand the need. Plus, being an ODST does feel different to being a Spartan - not being able to jump as high is taking some getting used to, as is having your face filled with grunt arse instead of just stepping over it, seeing as the camera now sits lower. Can't throw grenades as far either. But what do I know, eh? I've only played and enjoyed every single iteration of the Halo franchise...

That's about it really. Have a good one, people!

Plii Wotion Mus and the rest.

So...yeah...like...yeah...Wii Motion Plus. It's...well, it's been said a hundred thousand times, so what's the harm in one more? It makes the Wii do what they said it would do. Finally.

Now, I can hear you thinking - at least, the people who've read at least a few of my rantings about the Wii will be thinking - 'Ross, you dastardly devious devil! Didn't you get rid of your Wii?' Indeed I did. But part of the great thing about having a sofa and a whole bunch of friends who are festival workers is that there's always someone in need of a couch to sleep on at times like these. And one of those buddies just so happens to have a Wii which was in need of a TV to be used with. One thing led to another, and now - once again - my 360, the lothario that it is, is snuggled up next to a cute, perky Wii. Complete with the surgical enhancement that is the Motion Plus thingy. And she even brought contraception...

Sorry for the gross anology, but there isn't much more you can say about the strange floppy plastic thing that is more or less required to be wrapped about the WiiMote. Anyways, thank Steve that it is there, because it makes such dramatic improvements to the Wii's control method that it's an utter wonder they released the Wii without it.

Based on the two games that are actually any good on Wii Sports Resort (them being the sword-fighting, archery and the frisbee game - the still-as-fun-as-ever bowling aside), this is an absolutely enormous step up. Gone are the vague interpretation of movements - now the precise angle and level of the thing is calculated in more-or-less real-time. This allows for precision swings of a sword, almost pin-point accuracy with a bow, and exactly replicating the flick of your wrist as you chuck the frisbee. Brilliance.

Still doesn't play DVDs, though. That's still retarded. I suppose I can hate it for that...

Seen a lot of comedy in the last few days. Well...'comedy' on one count, and 'COMEDY!!!!!!!!!' on the other. Janeane Garofalo, unfortunately, falls under the latter.

Considering that it is billed as stand-up, and it is rather prominently featured at one of the biggest comedy venues at the Fringe (the Gilded Balloon...if you're in Edinburgh and you haven't been...why?), it was just a little surprising that she wasn't really that funny. It was more interesting than funny, with her talking about her life and her current state of mind more than cracking any jokes. Some observations are amusing, some are not. What's more, she had the balls to milk her opening applause to a rather extreme point, then proceed with a massively under-rehearsed show. I mean, yeah...she's famous, but fuck! She could at least put some effort into having a point. But no, she turns up looking rather like Ugly Betty on a bad day, rambles for a bit, then buggers off. Not exactly worth the £12 spent on her. So yeah, disappointed with that.

The 'COMEDY!!!!!!!' was going to Late'n'Live (again at GB...yes, I like the place) with Patrick Monahan compering a show that involved pile-ons, lesbians and an angry drunk guy attempting to heckle a gay male comedian, only to have said comedian's crotch more or less thrust in his face. Sophisticated? No...but bugger me if it wasn't entertaining.

Got a video of Monahan instigating the pile-on...will try and upload if I can get the bugger converted down to a less ludicrous size (440MB? For a 4-minute video? Christ!).

That's about it, really...bed time now. Laters.

iPhone! DoW2! BF1943! B:AS! Acronyms galore!

Yes, I am a dirty dirty dirty whore. I've sold out to Apple, I'll admit it. But bugger me if the iPhone is worth it. Seriously - for those of you who may or may not be on the fence out there: it's worth it!

I mean, yes - there's the possible problem of the over-heating. But so far it seems that a) it only happens if you absolutely pound it in terms of use. 3-hour iPhone binges seem to be the source of all the hassle - and I doubt any mobile is designed to withstand 3 hours of continuous, high-speed use. It gets a wee bit warm if you play a game for 30-minutes straight, but beyond that, nothing spectacular to report.

Got free sandwiches today! That was brilliant - we went into Chocolate Soup at about 9pm, and the place closes at 9.30pm, so they toss out all the sandwiches made in the morning. But not after offering them to the customers in the shop! Cheese sandwiches were had all round! Yay!



Got Dawn of War 2 as well, and that's pretty good, although some of the missions are obnoxiously difficult, and others are just ludicrously easy. Doesn't really seem to be a middle ground between them...so you can't really ease yourself into the hard ones! But still, the mechanics of the single-player campaign work really well, and the pseudo-roleplaying elements are a welcome change from the usual rigamarole of 'build base, defend base, build army, attack, repeat', instead making battles all about momentum, squad skill and battelfield tactics, rather than who can build the stronger army faster. A proper review may well be in order, but I shan't do anything until I've tried everything the game has to offer, including what is apparently an excellent multiplayer component.

Next game I'm-a get is Battlefield 1943. I'm fairly concerned about the rather steep price tag - most arcade games are 800 points, this one's 1200! - but from what I've played so far, it does seem to be rather enjoyable. After that, it's Batman: Arkham Asylum, then the September double of Halo ODST and Modern Warfare 2. 2009 is definitely looking like a great year for gaming!

Going to see Public Enemies on Saturday. Really looking forward to that - Michael Mann maintains a place in my Favourite Directors of All Time list, so any new film by him is going to be a big thing! Will definitely post a review when I've seen it, though it may take a while to concoct!

That's about it for now...hopefully next thing you see here will be a review!

Laters!

So....

Well, a lot's been happening as of late. Lots of things announced, lots of things played and watched, lots of general goings-on.

Fee's away to Australia, which is sort of gutting. Going to be on my own for 19 days...and not really sure what I'm going to do with myself. It'll probably end up that I behave no differently, to be quite honest, but it's at the stage where I'm just a bit down about her leaving!

On the positive side, work's picking up. Had my first day of phone sales today, which was interesting to say the least. Was in for two-and-a-half hours and only took four calls, which seems a little ridiculous. But these were BIG orders, people booking their time at the Fringe with almost military precision. One guy spent upwards of £500 on tickets to various things, which was fairly impressive - not just for the amount of money he has to throw at it (I was only planning on spending about £100...), but also the meticulous detail with which he'd planned out the seven days he'd allocated to the Festival! It was quite daunting to say the least. Then there was the guy that had a huge order, but since he had been waiting so long to get served, his phone ran out of batteries! Quite shit to be honest, but he got his order fixed by someone else after I left - feel a little guilty (I could have been quicker), but I know it's not my fault. It's everyone who's so eager to get their tickets that they clam up the phone lines...oh well. I suppose on the flipside of the coin, they're the ones who get the big tickets first, like Bill Bailey or Jimmy Carr...

Loads of stuff going on the world of video games, not least the newly reinvigorated E3. To go into it in too much detail would take up a good four pages, so I'll just summarise my thoughts:

1. Microsoft's press conference was awesome. Loads of awesome exclusives, plus some great new multiplatform ones.

2. Natal is genius, and it put PS3's motion control to shame. You could tell the guy knew it as well - when he first stepped foot on the stage, he was nervous as hell, stuttering and everything! He got a bit more confident throughout - because, on any other day, it'd've been awesome. Just not that day.

3. Considering a switch to Rock Band, thanks to Rock Band Beatles, the awesome-looking new drum-kit and the fact that Green Day - yes, I'm apparently a 15-year-old boy, but I'm past caring - have committed themselves to Harmonix and not Red Octane. (Apologies for the rubbish picture...couldn't find a better one!)

4. Super-psyched about Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach. The ODST gameplay footage looks amazing, and it seems there's going to be a Gears of War 2 Horde clone called Firefight, which - whilst, obviously, not the most original of ideas - will, I think, fit very well into the Halo 3 gameplay. Coupled with new maps for H3, along with a Reach multiplayer beta invitation means ODST is shaping up to be a fantastic purchase.

5. Lots of people are moaning about Left 4 Dead 2 being downloadable content masquerading as a new game, but I reckon that actually this is a good thing. It gives them an opportunity to refine the game further - remove bugs, add the melee weapons, new weapons, new enemies - and so long as they do actually support L4D2 with downloadable content instead of going straight to L4D3...then it could work out for the best, to be quite honest.

6. DJ Hero = retarded but genius at the same time...not sure why I think that...

Those're the major points, not even covering the whole host of other stuff that's getting released!

So yes, despite the recession, we are living in exciting times for video games. 2008 rocked, and 2009 looks set to rock harder!

Anyways, adieu!

Velvet Assassin Review

There's been something of a hole in the stealth-based market for a while now, what with Splinter Cell: Double Agent being relatively rubbish, and Conviction now on the horizon and looking good. Metal Gear was off doing it's own thing - becoming some kind of 'conflict simulator' instead of a true-blue stealth game - and somewhere under the radar, in slinks Velvet Assassin.

Taking the Splinter Cell formula and injecting it with that most beloved of historical periods for video games: World War II, Velvet Assassin puts you into the shoes and anachronistically tight jumpsuit of Violette Summer, a British assassin working in Nazi-occupied France and Germany. We're introduced to Violette as she is lying heavily sedated in a hospital bed, and the bulk of the gameplay takes place in her head as she remembers the missions that got her into her predicament.

Velvet Assassin actually makes quite a good impression of for the most part - starting with genuinely engaging story and dialogue direction, synergised with a beautifully stylised graphics engine. A few rare visual glitches and ommisions aside, the game looks absolutely fantastic - shadows are black as hell, lights are sharp and saturating, creating an immersively tense atmosphere. Of particular note are the sunlight effects, with gorgeous sunsets portrayed with suprising amount of work gone into the glow that sunsets invariably imbue objects with.

There's a decent amount of detail elsewhere, both in the visual and sound design - Germans will banter with eachother as the go about their patrols, smoke cigarettes and generally hang about, but there's a real dark edge to the dialogue which paints each individual Nazi as just that - an individual. Whilst character models don't change significantly, personalities do - one Nazi is incredibly sympathetic, stuck on door duty whilst his relief is drunk and asleep; another is a nasty piece of work who suggests letting prisoners loose and shooting at them as they try to get away. It occasionally feels a bit too scripted, but for the most part the flow of the narrative is almost invariably improved by these little details.

A final artistic flourish is found in 'morphine mode' which - with the press of a button - slows down time, and allows you to either run for cover without being shot, or indeed silence that last enemy in the patrol who's about to see you. It's played out in a rather ingenious manner too, being equated to a fragmented memory that is jumbled up when, in the 'present', nurses administer morphine to control her pain. In the flashback, the air sudden fills with falling rose petals, and Violette herself sheds most of her clothes to be dressed in the night-dress she's wearing in the 'present'. It's actually a genuinely impressive mechanic that is both artistically and technically faultless, leading to some wonderfully savage takedowns of enemies

Lamentably, though, it lets itself down in two rather crucial departments - controls and the enemy artificial intelligence.

Let's start with the controls, because I can cut to the chase pretty quick - they're simply not responsive enough, and there's just not enough that you're able to do. Absent is a jump function, and whilst there is the ability to climb over obstacles, this is only available in certain areas and is ludicrously glitchy, with you frequently finding yourself stuck inside the crate which you were trying to climb on, unable to extract yourself. The aiming controls are also far too clunky to be useful, being not capable of sustaining a firefight efficiently beyond the first shot. This would be fine if the gameplay was entirely stealth based, as it'd discourage exposing yourself into a firefight. But once again, a stealth game insists upon an action-heavy section where you're expected to take out loads of oncoming enemies with your firearms - and these are a huge chore when they arrive.

They're incredibly counter-intuitive as well - left bumper for duck? Right/left on the D-pad to reload? Y to merely whistle to attract your enemies attention? What planet are we living on?

Next is the enemy intelligence - it's almost non-existent. Almost being a key word, because 99% of the time, the enemies are ludicrously stupid, following set out routes into shadows to investigate what lies within them, making taking them out more a question of timing than actual stealth. Now, this is an acceptable way of carrying out AI: not exactly state of the art (heck, the original Splinter Cell puts it to shame, and that's - what? - ten years old now?) but functional enough to immerse you in the atmosphere in the game. But what screws the pooch is the fact that every so often, enemies will display intelligent behaviour, tracking you down almost mercilessly, sometimes requiring you to backtrack a good chunk of the level just to get them to stop following you.

The obvious - and, according to Ockhams Razor, correct - explanation is that the developers were attempting to create semi-intelligent AI, but for whatever reason - almost certainly to get it shipped before Splinter Cell: Conviction - they cut some corners when actually implementing it. It's a frustrating break in the immersion so expertly evoked by the graphics and voice acting, as well as being generally frustrating anyway, with it being absolutely impossible to know when the AI will decide to go rogue. Some play throughs of levels will have no instances, whilst others will be absolutely plagued with them.

At the end of the day, Velvet Assassin just about manages to hold an interim place between Splinter Cells. A beautifully told story with fantastic atmosphere and - as a final addendum - well-thought-out achievements make up for the unfinished feel to the AI and controls. If you can look past the foibles, there's certainly a lot to enjoy when playing Velvet Assassin. At least until Conviction comes out...

Click for Expanded Scores

Graphics Glitches and lack of variety tempered by excellent light and enviroments. 8/10 Sound Haunting sound effects and top-notch voice acting keep the atmosphere tense. 9/10 Gameplay Solid but unremarkable stealth mechanics, with terrible AI and clumsy shooting. 5/10 Value for Money Well thought out achievements, but can be frustrating dealing with the AI for a second play through. Rent. 6/10 Tilt Some genuinely good ideas in here - this is something of an unpolished diamond. 8/10

Overall Score: 72%

Before I continue...

...allow me to elaborate. Essentially, I'm implementing a new feature in the games reviews section - Expanded Scores. These're essentially micro-reviews for games, and will always be tacked onto the end of a prose review, or they may well appear on their own. Essentially they're for getting the gist of a review across, so if you can't be arsed to read my wall of text, but still care about what I think, you can have a quick glance at the Expanded Scores!

They'll essentially look like this - and yes, I have IGN to thank for the main idea.

Click for Expanded Scores
(It'll only be hidden if there's a prose review preceeding it - if it's on its own, it'll be shown)

Graphics and Presentation Obvious what I'll talk about here. No more than 50 words per section here, by the by. X/10 Sound Something about the sound design here effects here. This includes voice acting and music as well as sound effects. X/10 Gameplay Comments on the gameplay here. Simple, really. X/10 Value for Money Well...is it? Usually I'll conclude this section with either 'Rent' or 'Buy'. You can figure out what I mean by those... X/10 Reviewer's Tilt This is a concept that I can't take credit for - Gamespot used to use it a few years ago before they introduced their badge system. Here I'll talk about anything that doesn't fall into the above four categories. Essentially it tweaks the score in any one direction, based on my feelings towards it. For instance, if I give low marks to all of the four categories, but still liked the game, I can put 10 here to make the overall score more accurately represent what I think of the game. X/10

Overall Score: XX%

Obviously there are going to be some teething problems as I 100% sort out the code for it (at the moment its at about 90%), but hopefully this'll be a new and exciting feature that'll keep you guys interested!

Now! Onto a Velvet Assassin review!

Employedness...like Loch Ness...

So yeah, I've now been employed by the Edinburgh Fringe Society for 9 days, and I'm generally feeling better about myself. Work seems to veer greatly from ludicrously easy to frustratingly difficult and slow, so it averages out at about the right level. But work is work, and hopefully some moneys should start a-flowing their way into my bank account, instead of the constant stream going out of it.

Work has also brought me to appreciate the Genius function on the new range of iPods - a single press of a button and you can choose the mood of a playlist or make it go off an a stylistic tangent from what you've already established. Essentially means that there's very little downtime between songs, thanks to the lack of need to choose and subsequently find which songs you want! Brilliant stuff.

Elsewhere...big news today: Pixar's latest outing, Up, sees its cinematic release Stateside today, and the general consensus seems to be that it's Pixar's best film ever, even better than Wall-E! I have to say that the latter statement does stretch plausibility somewhat - if it is genuinely better than Wall-E, I'll eat my hat: that film was literally perfect - but it doesn't make me any less enthused about it.

Pixar - it seems - are one of the very few studios that you can count on for consistency, regardless of what medium they choose to make their films in. They have but one weak outing, and that'd be A Bug's Life, back when they were still technically finding their feet as an independant studio. Yes, Cars was relatively weak - I wrote a review of it, but failed to publish it on here... - but it still far outshines anything that Dreamworks has ever put out.

Film-wise, Fighting and Drag Me to Hell are on release here in the UK - think the latter might be my Film of the Weekend, to be quite honest. I'm a huge fan of Fight Club, so when something get's labelled as 'The Fight Club for...', I get a little wary, seeing as everything ever labelled as such has invariably turned out to be disappointing. Terminator Salvation is next week, and despite it getting generally poor reviews, Empire still awarded it four stars, which is encouraging. Then the next big release is Michael Bays Giant Hulking Robots 2, which I'm also definitely looking forward to. It'll be an anniversary of sorts, considering that Transformers is the first movie that I wrote a review for on this blog! Genius indeed.

The video games world, on the other hand, has some hugely interesting releases coming up in the next few weeks. The Sims 3 finally sees its release after a number of delays - June 3rd that'll be hitting our screens - as well as the rather enticing Red Faction: Guerilla on June 5th. If you've got a 360 or PS3 and haven't downloaded both RFG demos...what are you waiting for? The multiplayer is better than the single player, however I reckon that both packaged together will make for a rather pleasing gaming experience that may well worm its way into my regular playlist.

The multiplayer in particular is worthy of special mention - it's incredibly accessible, and the GeoMod 2.0 engine makes pitched firefights all the more interesting thanks to crumbling scenery and dynamic battlefields that are rarely the same twice! The weapons are nicely balanced - albeit some of them a bit weird, and the sledgehammer, whilst a great idea in theory, really needs nerfed, as it's far too easy to score a one hit kill with it at the moment.

That's all that's on my mind at the moment. Long post! Blimey. Have a nice one, guys!

Wanted: Weapons of Fate Review

Let's face it, if you watched the movie Wanted, chances are that there was at least one moment in it where you said to yourself 'that'd make an awesome moment in a video game'. Well, you'd be right - Wanted does lend itself to a technically proficient and thoroughly entertaining game. Unfortunately, it's completely crippled by a miniscule running time, as well as being so easy that sometimes you wonder why they didn't just make a sequel instead of a video game.

We'll get more or less the one truly bad thing about the game out the way first - yes, you can finish the game in less time than it takes to watch through the movie, that's how short it is. Even playing through it a second time for achievements/trophies adds barely any time onto the experience whatsoever - I got 46/50 achievements from the mere 7 hours I spent with the game.

There is, however, a flipside to the shortness coin - W:WoF never outstays its welcome. Just when you start to realise how inept some elements are: BAM! The game's over and you don't care any more. It does seem to be a new style of video-game development – as Peter Jackson put it: the line between movies and video-games is getting slightly blurry.

This is because this is where the game really shines - in emulating its source material. Ulf Anderson - creative director of the project – presents us with an orgy of amusingly profane one-liners, tense, bullet-curving gunfights and brutal melee takedowns. The story, too, whilst a little on the half-baked side, is still in keeping with the style of the film, and is more or less an excuse to propel Wesley Gibson from firefight to firefight in a quest to find the man who killed his mother.

Easily the best thing about the game is the gun-fighting, incorporating such original concepts as cover-use, and limited weapon slots. Despite a lack of weapons – there’s only really three to choose from – the fact that the game is so short means that they’re always fun to fire, and once you've unlocked the bullet-curving technique, the combat becomes that little bit more fun.

Activated by holding the right bumper, this causes Wesley to assume the bullet-curving position, a line extending from his weapon to his current target. You’ve then got to manipulate the trajectory of the bullet, twisting it around obstacles so that it can reach the bastard who just won’t pop out of cover. Endless fun can be have trying to rack up as many kills as possible with a single bullet – with them having the contrived but brilliant property of never losing speed as they plough through enemies. Place a bullet particularly well, and the camera will break off from Wesley, following in a bullets-eye view as it wreaks its havoc on your enemies. The range is a little limited, but again – the game’s simply too short for you to really realise this over how freaking awesome it looks and feels to pull off.

Also of note is the game's excellent take on quick-time events. No mere random addition, here they are a core part of the gameplay - taking inspiration from that scene in the movie where Wesley runs through the textile mill, blowing away baddies with military precision. The QTEs are essentially a riff on this - movement control is taken from you, and instead you have to watch as Wesley powers his way through the situation, slowing down every so often for you to pick off bad guys and incoming bullets. It’s brutally cinematic, and shows exactly how useful QTEs can be when they’re implemented correctly. You can also implement them in a more limited fashion in the normal run of things, using up adrenaline to slow down time as you bolt from cover to cover, allowing you to pick-off absent-minded enemies before they even realise someone’s shooting at them.

But the minor niggles do start to creep in even in such a short time - the movement controls simply don't feel right, almost like Wesley is walking through treacle, though fortunately this is made up for by the slick cover-swapping system I mentioned earlier. The AI is a little cheap too, relying on enemies who’re super-tough (we’re talking 4-5 headshots here) instead of presenting intelligent, adaptive opponents. It’s also almost insultingly easy, with Wesley soaking up damage like a particularly suicidal sponge – I played through it twice and only died four times total! This is perhaps a method of - as I said - blurring the line between film and game, keeping in line with Wesley's new 'super-assassin' credentials, but some challenge would be more than welcome next time.

As you've probably gathered, 'doesn't outstay its welcome' is something of a theme in this review, and that pretty much sums up the game. In a longer iteration, the lack of content coupled with the rough controls outside of the core gunplay and quick-time events would be a massive source of frustration, but in W:WoF you barely notice it as you effortlessly power through the main campaign. If you can grab it from a bargain bin or second hand for the same price as a DVD, do so – but otherwise you can leave it to its fated disappearance into the annals of history.

Ross' Rating: 70%