Season's Greetings!

Achievements and trophies are like the doors of a Christmas advent calendar. You open them up as you progress towards your ultimate goal, the end of the game, that double door on the 24^th with the big chocolate behind it.

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is a visual journey through the trophies and achievements for the games that I’ve completed thus far. These are what have been behind the double doors in my own year-long advent calendar:

1: Bulletstorm

2: Rage

3: Battlefield 3

4: Metal Gear Solid

As Metal Gear Solid has no trophy support here's a reminder of my terrible rating.

5: Assassin’s Creed: Revelations

6: Little Big Planet

7: Aliens Vs Predator

8: LA Noire

9: Driver: San Francisco

10: Dead Space 2

11: FIFA 12

As I didn't 'finish' the game, just played a season, there was of course no trophy stating that the game had been completed. So here's a picture of the virtual me that I created to use in the game. 

12: Mass Effect 3

13:Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

14: God of War

15: Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

16: SOCOM 4

17: Medal of Honor

Unfortunately I've been a bit too busy enjoying Christmas to get on with the task at hand, so nothing's been completed lately. Hopefully I'll get back on track once the silly season is over.

Happy New Year!

"Look, it's that cop that solved the big case!"

Much like my experience with Aliens Vs Predator this phrase, or variations on it, haunted me throughout my time with LA Noire. The non-playable characters that populate the world only say a few things, but they say them so often that it gets tiresome. Just write some more lines for crying out loud! In the credits there were about sixty people listed as doing incidental pedestrian voice work. Make it seem like that!

It’s hard to believe that every third person in LA would loudly comment on the sight of a plain clothed police officer, let alone recognise him in the first place. This city is overpopulated by men with hats that are too big for their heads, on heads that are too big for their bodies, so how would they pick him out of that crowd?

Team Bondi were obviously faced with a conundrum. They had great facial animation that would lose its impact if reduced beyond a certain size. Do they make the characters’ heads smaller to fit the standard Rockstar protagonist body size, thereby compromising what was a major selling point of the game? Or do they make their bodies larger and more properly proportioned, but then not have them fit properly into the frame?

They opted to put big bobble heads on tiny, no neck, poorly motion captured bodies. It’s a difficult decision, and I can see why they chose the faces over the bodies, but you look at it at times and wonder if there’s any point in having this wonderful facial detail if you’re dumping it on top of a third rate body, and then plopping on a hat that juts out about four inches too far off the back of their head.

The game’s graphical inconsistencies are matched only by the developer’s inability to properly integrate story and gameplay. One would imagine that the thrill behind playing this sort of detective game would come from using a combination of evidence, keen observation, and masterful interrogation to correctly determine the murderer, arsonist, etc. You’d feel fulfilled from locking up the bad guy. Unfortunately nearly every person you accuse, charge, and put away is later revealed to be innocent. Of course, to make matters worse you knew this all along.

There’s no satisfaction here, no sense of accomplishment. You close a case, yet you know you’ve done the wrong thing. That’s not a rewarding experience. The player’s enjoyment is undermined by the story that the game is trying to tell, a story which isn’t nearly that great, nor clever. In fact it's practically the same story as Hot Fuzz, minus the fat monkey jokes and Point Break references. It’s even got its own version of the bloke that says “Yarp.”

It may sound like I hate this game, I don’t, it was just a disappointing, exasperating experience overall. I think it’s because I was really looking forward to it. I fed into the hype and imagined this was going to be something that it wasn’t. I suppose you could say I’m partly to blame.

I blame Brendan McNamara who wrote and directed the stupid thing.

One day someone will make a really great detective game where you’ll come away feeling like you’ve made a difference. I didn’t feel like I’d cleaned up the streets. I felt like I’d harassed and intimidated a lot of innocent people and grieving husbands. I felt cheated and frustrated. I came away feeling like I’d been played.

"Don't relax just yet, Marines!"

I swear I heard that phrase about a hundred times while playing through Aliens Vs Predator. It’s pretty much the only line of dialogue that they bothered to record for the humans, so when you’re stalking the marines as the Predator or the Alien that’s all you’ll hear them say. There are one or two lines that are uttered when you are pouncing onto your prey; ‘There it… !’, ‘Urk!’, and ‘Gar!’ do feature as you eviscerate and decapitate your enemies, but when you’re silently traversing the levels getting ready for some tasty murder nearly all you’ll hear is “Don’t relax just yet, Marines!” Again, and again.

And the frequency of it! Dickhead Number 1 would be saying it, only to have Dickhead Number 2, too excited to wait three seconds for his time to blurt out the same tired line, repeat it over the top of Dickhead Number 1. It’s like when you get a bunch of people singing the different lines of “Row, Row, Row Your boat” at different times so that there’s a clashing cacophony of unbearable nonsense reverberating around your skull! Just terrible.

Couldn’t they have recorded a couple more lines? How much longer would it have taken? How much more would it have cost? Did no-one playtesting this game ever say “Hey boss, this ‘don’t relax just yet marines’ line sure is getting bloody annoying!” Maybe. Maybe not. And that’s the big problem with this game. Large problems that were easy to fix were overlooked or ignored. It’s just really lazy game making.

I wasn’t a big fan of this one. Each of the three campaigns was short and re-trod the same three locations as the previous ones, just in a different order. More repetition. It seems to be the main motif of this game.

FIFA 12 – Virtual Fulham FC

There were no Premier League games this weekend due to World Cup Qualifiers, so no FIFA was played by me as a result.

So now that AVP’s finished I guess I’ll concentrate on another repetitive game, LA Noire. Hurray. I’ll try to mix that up with a bit of Alan Wake before tackling Dead Space 2. There were never any scary bits in AVP so I’m looking forward to a couple of games that build tension and create atmosphere. I’m looking forward to being scared. I’m looking forward to not relaxing just yet, Marines.

Two more down. The horror!

Two games completed this week! They were...

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations

After the initial apprehension I had for this game I ended up quite liking it! The storyline and missions were more streamlined than in previous instalments, and I enjoyed running around Constantinople a lot more than I did Rome in AC: Brotherhood. There were some elements that I felt didn’t work too well. I wasn’t that into the bomb making or the ‘Den Defence’ sections, and for brevity’s sake I ignored some of the tedious side missions. But I had fun and I think that overall I enjoyed this one more than Brotherhood.

I also finished off Little Big Planet. I only had five or six levels left to do on this one, and it was a nice change of pace from the shooters and military themed games I’ve been completing over the last month.

So with another two out of the way I’m making good progress. However, I’ve been feeling that lately I’m falling back into old habits. I’m flitting from game to game. A little bit of Assassin’s Creed here, some Little Big Planet there. I also put Dirt 3 in and had a couple of races on that. Then sometimes I’d I stare at Metal Gear Solid 2 and think, hmm, maybe I’ll do a bit of sneaking…

I need to be more organised. Create a better structure for getting through this pile of shame. I need mini deadlines to help me get through, otherwise it all seems like too great a task. I need a theme that will allow me to allocate four or five games that I can commit to finishing by the end of the month.

So, seeing as Halloween is approaching I thought that Horror Month might be exactly what I need to get focused! With that decided, I took a look at the horror games in The Pile. There’s a few too many to realistically get finished in the next four weeks. So these are the ones that I’ve decided I want to get finished by Halloween.

Alan Wake

I got this game a couple of years ago (for my birthday, of course) and played about half to two thirds of it. I was enjoying it even though it had its flaws. I wrote a piece that was published in Game Informer AU lamenting the game’s ridiculous carrot dangling and goalpost moving. I didn’t intend to abandon this game, but as per bloody usual I saw something shiny and game shaped out of the corner of my eye and promptly left this one on the shelf unfinished.

Then a terrible event occurred; ‘The Great 360 Hard Drive Disaster of 2011’. I was still using the 20 GB hard drive that had come with my 360 back in 2007, and I saw a deal on one of those ‘Deal of the day’ sites that was a 60GB hard drive and a new headset. Perfect!

I needed a new headset because of a catastrophe that predated the ‘G360HDDof2011’. The cat had jumped onto my lap while I was playing online and wearing the headset; she’d got caught in the wire that connected the controller to the headset, had a fit and jumped off in terror, ripping the wires out of their sockets, rendering them useless. The headset flew off my head and broke into three pieces against the door. What can I say, she’s a big cat.

So I purchased this deal and received my new hard drive. I went online to find out the best way to transfer the data from hard drive A to hard drive B. Stupidly ignoring the advice to use a Microsoft approved transfer cable (it was 25 bucks!) I followed the instructions for using a flash drive for the transfer.

I copied all my original data onto the flash drive, and went to install it onto drive B. The data wasn’t there. So I tried again. It still wasn’t there. I then discovered that not only had this procedure not copied the data to the flash drive, but it had removed all the data from my original hard drive as well.

Hilarious.

All of my game saves since 2007 had been destroyed in an instant, and there was no way to retrieve them. This is a massive part of the reason that so many of my Xbox 360 games sit there unfinished.

I have to start them all over again.

This is the case with Alan Wake.

What a pain in the arse.

(The headset works fine though)

Aliens vs. Predator

When I was a kid I spent almost every day, night, and weekend obsessing over Aliens, Predator, Robocop, and The Terminator. I owned all the movies, comics, magazines, collector’s cards, toys, models, games, special effects books, everything that related to these movies that I could get my hands on. My friend Louis and I just couldn’t get enough. Every Saturday we’d spend hours in Forbidden Planet and various other comic and collectables shops in London’s West End.

If I’d played this game in 1990 I would have wet my pants in joyous excitement. If I’d played this game in 2000 it would have been awesome. But unfortunately this game seems to be stuck somewhere in the early noughties. It ignores obvious advancements in the genre (and gaming in general), such as the ability to crouch, or aim down your gun’s sights, or use a flashlight, and is generally just a bit rubbish. And the fact that it’s almost the same game as Aliens vs. Predator 2 that came out for PC and Mac in 2001 is far too evident. It’s a crying shame. The thirteen year old in me tries to be positive about it, I want to love it, but unfortunately I can’t.

I’ve no idea how far I’d gotten through this one before abandoning it in disappointment. There are three campaigns, human, predator, and alien. If I had to guess I’d say I’ve done two thirds of the human portion, a third of the predator bit, and five minutes of the alien one. So I think finishing this one will be a bit of a joyless slog for me. There are some good moments in this, but too much that just feels unevolved.  

Dead Space 2

The first Dead Space was great, the haunted house in space setting was right up my alley. It featured genuine scares and tension.

I haven’t started this one yet, so I’m hoping to start it and get it done in a couple of fat sessions over a couple of days. I really want to soak up the atmosphere of this one.

And lastly we have here a horrible game, truly devoid of humanity, emotion, and joy, a game that chills me to my bones.

The last game that I want to get finished in Horror Month is…

LA Noire

Ugh. I don’t like this game. I was really, really excited for it. There aren’t enough detective games. I was looking forward to examining evidence, piecing together puzzles, and using lateral thinking to discover the truth. Unfortunately it was a game that promised a lot, but actually delivered very little. Its graphical achievements were legitimately fantastic, but it was repetitive, featured a blatantly flawed interrogation system, restricted you at almost every level, and basically played itself.

I’d had visions of having two suspects with evidence that pointed to both. I would then have to interrogate them, look at their answers in conjunction with the evidence, and determine which of them was guilty.

Unfortunately the only time this happened you actually knew that neither of them was the killer. Yet the game made you accuse and arrest one, even though you knew it to be bullshit. Your boss then had a right go at you because the guy was innocent. Wow, way to reward the player. Who wrote this shit?!

I wrote this piece for the Sydney Morning Herald’s video game blog that pretty much sums up my feelings about this game. Not sure whether I should do this in a couple of big chunks, or do one case a night over the next couple of weeks. Dragging it out might make it worse!

FIFA 12 - Virtual Fulham

My virtual Fulham had an ok couple of weeks, played twice, lost one, won one, which was better than their real life counterparts who only managed a draw out of their two games. They started their Horror Month before I did.

Here are the current standings:

Virtual Fulham FC

 POS   P   W   D   L   GD   PTS

    6      7    3     3    1     6      12

The Real Fulham FC

POS    P   W   D   L   GD   PTS

   9       7    3     1   3     4       10

So that's all for now, I've still got a lot of (scary) work ahead of me. I'm off to go and play in the dark. 

That sounds so wrong.