The spectrum of conflict

This week I reached a landmark in my journey. I completed the 20^th game from my pile of shame, and it was thanks to my friend and neighbour, Simon. Simon is a father of two kids under 3 years old. Like most parents he spends a lot of time looking after his children, and not a lot of time indulging the child within himself. 

About a year ago, on a rare night off, he came over to enjoy some beer and games. I asked him what sort of game he wanted to play, and he said that he’d heard a lot about Call of Duty, so he fancied having a go at one of those. I put out a selection of COD games, and he selected World at War. We got through a few levels, he really enjoyed it, and so we decided to see the whole thing through together.

Every now and then we’d get together for a couple of hours and wage war against the Nazis and the Japanese. Each time we’d complete a little bit more of the game, taking small amounts of territory in a fashion similar to that of the real campaigns. “We’ll have to win that war soon,” we’d tell each other every couple of months, trying our best to arrange some gaming time, with varying degrees of success.

Then, last week I saw Simon and he announced, “I’m proposing an end to tyranny and oppression!” “My God, you’re getting a divorce?” I asked, having spent a great deal of time lately watching old British sitcoms on The Comedy Channel. As it turned out he wanted to lock in a time for us to make the final push and finally complete World at War.

And now I am happy to report that a great day has come to pass. We have succeeded! We have conquered evil on two fronts. It was a magnificent victory and a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

It was made all the better because the whole experience harkened back to those days of yore, a glorious and bygone era. No, not World War II, the Eighties and Nineties. Playing through this game with Simon reminded me of all those times growing up when you’d play a game with your friends and share the whole experience with them. Having someone sitting on the sofa next to you, passing the controller back and forth, cursing and laughing at their failures, cheering their successes. It’s like watching a really long interactive movie where you enjoy it together, and then recall all your favourite parts when it’s finished.

I remember when I was about 10 years old I would go round to my best friend Thomas’s house. We would have a terrible time trying to get his ZX Spectrum to load. We’d play the tape, it would make those horrible, horrible noises for what seemed like twenty minutes, and only at the very end of the whole process would we find out if it had even loaded correctly. It seemed that more often than not it wouldn’t have, and we’d have to repeat the process, desperate for at least one game of 'International Karate Plus' before I had to go home. It was our own little war with the ZX Spectrum.

One time we got so pissed off that we started the tape, and then went foraging for conkers on the common for half an hour or so. When we came back we found that, much to our delight and surprise, it had loaded! We had won this particular battle through absence.

From that point on we were convinced that it would only load if we were out of its line of sight, so we’d set it up and hide so that the Spectrum didn’t know we were there. It was a surefire guarantee of success! There we would be, hiding behind the sofa, mucking about and stifling our laughter in case the Spectrum heard us and chose not to load. It seemed like we had almost as much fun waiting for the game to load as we did playing it. But the joy we felt when it did work and we could finally play those classic games was unparalleled.

Even now, 25 years later, those memories bring a smile to my face. I didn’t realise how much I’d missed the shared fun that comes from gaming in the same room as another person. Online gaming can put you in contact with people all around the world, but it doesn’t always bring you closer, or provide a memorable and enjoyable experience. The co-op experience Simon and I shared with COD: World at War was a thrilling, laugh-filled affair that brought back a lot of great memories, and I’m keen for more of the same.

So that’s one Call of Duty off my list, one more to go. I’m tempted to suggest to Simon that we play through that one together too, but lately I’ve really been feeling the pile of shame breathing down my neck, and I’m not sure that his commitments would really be able to mesh with timeframe. But you never know, we may just overcome insurmountable odds. After all, what fun is going to war without your brothers beside you?

20 down, 30 to go.

Time to pick up the pace.

When I started this journey I hoped that I’d complete one game a week in order to stay on target. I’m in the 21st week and I’ve now finished 19 games. That’s not too bad, especially considering that Christmas and New Year ate into my gaming time a lot more than I had originally envisaged. I didn’t complete any games, or even really play much of anything for nearly three weeks, a shocking lapse. So now is the time to really start ramping it up in terms of effort and dedication. I did that by finishing off game number 19, Max Payne 3.

This game was pretty much the same the whole way through. Take cover and shoot some guys. Enter slow motion and shoot a bunch of guys. Jump forwards through the air in slow motion and shoot loads of guys. If you really wanted to switch it up you could jump sideways though the air and shoot up some guys... in slow motion!

But you know what? This game was fantastic. It just goes to show what presentation and polish can really do for a game. The grim tone, maudlin narration, excellent cut-scenes, and the driving, pulsing soundtrack made this an entertaining and immersive affair, one whose repetition could be overlooked in favour of the experience as a whole. Besides, the shooting was so tight and so much fun that it didn’t really matter that that’s all there was. Rather than being a Jack-of-all-trades, it was a master of one. I loved it. I wanted to restart on a higher difficulty level as soon as I’d finished it. But that’s strictly against the rules. There's too many other games sitting there unfinished.

So then, what do I do about that pile of shame? It’s going down, but it’s still pretty intimidating. I was looking at the games that I’ve completed so far. Some, like Skyrim, were ones that I knew would take a fair amount of time to get through, so it’s good to have that one out of the way. I look at Dark Souls, sitting there barely touched and I know that that one is going to require a massive investment.

I think the best thing to do is to commit to one longer game, while trying to get through shorter, lighter fare at the same time. I can chip away at something like Dark Souls or The Witcher 2, and then jump into something a bit less challenging and involved, such as Halo or Super Mario 64. Hopefully that will keep the pile of shame decreasing, and the pile of pride steadily increasing.

19 down, 31 to go. Stay on target.

First impressions matter. A lot.

I remember one time about fifteen years ago, when I was a brash twenty year old, I’d just started seeing a new girlfriend. She lived in her parent’s house, the garden of which was undergoing a renovation, and a delightful crazy paving was replacing whatever had been there before. She told me all about how she had to suffer these weirdos that her Dad employed to do all his odd jobs and manual labour. Apparently they were all old, ex junkie, recovering alcoholic types that rented rooms in his nearby B&B business. They were keen to be friendly and polite whenever they saw her, engaging her in small talk and the like, asking after the family and her general health.

The first time that I stayed over she reminded me that I might see some guys who were working on the garden in the morning, that I shouldn’t be startled if there was some scruffy looking freak in the kitchen getting a glass of water or a cup of tea, as her Dad liked these guys to get started early.

After a night of boozing, the morning came. We awoke, and headed into the kitchen to make a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich. I had my head in the fridge, searching for the bacon, as I heard the patio doors slide open. “Oh, Hi,” I heard the girl say, “Tom, this is Glen.” I glanced over my shoulder, and saw a weathered little man standing in the doorway. He wore skimpy, tatty work shorts and a faded old t-shirt. His craggy face creased as he squinted at me over his twitchy nose. He wiped his dirty hands on his equally dirty shorts. “Alright, mate,” I muttered, and returned to my search for the bacon. “Hello. So, er, how’s your sister this morning?” this Glen bloke asked, and a less than interesting conversation played out behind me. I pretended to search for the bacon long after I had found it in an effort to avoid having to make small talk with the strange, ratty little man.

Eventually the painful exchange came to end. “Nice to meet you, Tom was it?”  the Glen-thing said. “Yep,” was all that I could mange to muster, not even bothering to glance in his direction. It was early, I was hungover, and the sooner he left, the sooner we could make our bacon butties. He pulled the patio door shut and went back to his work in the garden. I started to pass her the ingredients from the fridge. As I did so she casually said, “Sorry you had to meet my Dad before we’d even had breakfast.” I froze, lettuce in hand, inwardly cringing, my bowels tightening. I replayed the encounter in my head. Then I replayed it from his perspective. Ouch.

I was with that girl for a good few years, and my relationship with her father was never very good, as you would imagine after that sort of introduction. Sometimes we got on ok, we could manage to joke and laugh about stuff, we even found some common interests, but it was always a strained relationship. There was a tense undercurrent, as if he kind of liked me, but he was always waiting for me to fuck up again. This is exactly the same relationship that I had with Skyrim.

It is a rare occasion that I buy a game as soon as it comes out. I normally wait for a bargain, but Skyrim looked so good that I jumped on the hype train and ran out and bought a copy. I excitedly rushed home and threw the disc in the PlayStation. I clicked 'Start New Game' and readied myself to embark upon a sword and sorcery fantasy experience of epic proportions.

The game started, my character’s eyes opened in first person perspective. I looked around. I was in a cart that was trundling along a mountain track, a prisoner along with several others. One of them started to talk to me. “So you’re awake”, he said, “We wondered...” The character that had been speaking to me was silenced midsentence. Everything on the screen had frozen. The controls were unresponsive. I couldn’t believe it; the game had crashed in the very first minute.

I stared at the screen in disbelief and annoyance. I was disappointed, mildly disgusted, and left with a generally unpleasant taste in my mouth. A memory emerged from the depths and surfaced. This was how that girl’s father had felt as he stood in the garden, staring through the glass of the patio door at the useless lump that he’d just been introduced to.

Annoyed, and shamed by the memory of that embarrassing encounter, I restarted the game. This time it seemed to work well enough for an hour or so, and then halfway through the character creation it shit itself again. This was a recurring theme. It would work for a while and I’d be getting along with it just fine, and then it would have a seizure of some sort. This potential threat was always there in the back of my mind. I knew that it had the ability to be fun and engaging, but I also knew that at any moment we could be right back where we started, with the game unresponsive, and me sitting there thinking ‘I knew this would happen’.

The other day I finished Skyrim. It has been a love/hate relationship. I encountered the odd problem here and there covering varying degrees of frustration. Crashing, temporary freezing, catastrophic collapses, bugs that made quests impossible to complete, dragons that flew backwards, graphical glitches galore, all were present and accounted for. It was good fun, but it was also infuriating. The whole experience was laid out in those first couple of minutes. If it had worked well enough at first and then the problems started to crop up the further I got, then I might have been able to be more forgiving. As it turned out, that first impression was something that I just couldn't shake. Now I know exactly how Glen felt. Sorry, Glen.

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!

Well that was short, and not particularly sweet.

It only took me about 5 or 6 hours to play through Medal of Honor (<- insert u). It was actually quite lucky that the game was so short, it was pretty irritating at times, and a longer experience would have gone from mildly infuriating to full on annoying.

Come to think of it, the game would have been shorter had I not happened across two game breaking bugs that forced me to restart two missions from the beginning. On one occasion my AI teammates were supposed to open a door so that we could proceed on our merry way, but they just sat in cover and there was no way to advance through the mission. Reset, plus a little swearing. Another time the beardy dude I was on a sniping mission with ploughed headlong through a door without even opening it, Patrick Swayze in Ghost style, and I was left on the other side with no way to progress through to the next area. Reset, plus a whole heap of swearing.

The game was full of bugs like this coupled with bad design choices. Graphical glitches were commonplace, most character’s feet and ankles were submerged a foot beneath whatever it was that they were supposed to be standing on. They’d then pop up to their proper place, before slowly sinking back down to mid-shin. I wasn’t allowed to open doors by myself, I could only do so only when told to. If we needed to hop a small waist high wall I had to wait for each of my squad to do so before I was offered the vault button prompt, lest I go before them and upset the pecking order. At other times I was required to do a ‘buddy boost’ up walls about seven feet high. I was such a rubbish soldier that I had to be pulled up these walls, and then watch on with shame in my heart and tears behind my night vision goggles as my supple and athletic teammates leapt up these same walls without any need for assistance, and certainly no assistance from a withered, feeble little wretch such as the guy as I was playing.

Speaking of which, who exactly was it that was I playing? This was yet another military shooter that throws you around from one faceless, characterless soldier to another. This one’s called Rabbit, this one’s called Douche, this one’s called I don’t fucking know nor rightly care. I knew what my teammates names were though, mainly because they wouldn’t stop running into my line of fire, so much so that I ended up failing several missions for persistent friendly fire.

There were other oddities and annoyances that showed that the game was rushed and lazy. Vehicles exploded without fire. One enemy jeep just jumped up into the air and the doors fell off in an approximation of an explosion. Occasionally grenades that I’d thrown didn’t go off. Sprinting felt like you were running through treacle, probably because my character’s legs were submerged in the earth below, like everyone else’s. You could ask your teammates for ammo, and when near enough to them a prompt would appear on screen. The problem was that this prompt came up whether you needed ammo or not, so every time I went near an ally I’d be like “Oh what’s this message, oh not again, no I don’t want ammo!!!” Why did it have to pop up every time, why couldn’t it do so only when I was low on ammo? Stupid game.

I hadn’t planned to talk about each and every game’s credits after discussing the lengthy credits of SOCOM 4, and I certainly hadn’t intended to look for amusing names in these credits, but CG Coordinator ‘Barry Poon’ certainly deserves a mention. Thankfully the credits ran for only 11 minutes, which was greatly appreciated because they featured one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard. I looked it up and it was by Linkin Park. Ugh. Here’s a link for you. It’s really, really bad. You have been warned. 

I think I’ve had my fill of military shooters for a while now. And so I’m going to go from one glitchy, bug filled game to another. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been slowly getting back into Skyrim. I know there’s a lot left for me to do, even with ignoring all side quests, and I still find myself getting distracted, wandering off exploring and collecting, so I’ll have to try to be more disciplined with it, otherwise I'll never finish this pile.

17 down, 33 to go.

If Matrix were here, he'd laugh too.

I’ve not really talked about game credits yet, which is surprising as I’ve sat through 16 different sets of credits in the last three months. I just finished SOCOM 4, and the credits for that game ran for an incredible amount of time, 26 minutes. The audio guys obviously knew that they were running for far too long to be considered appropriate, because after 15 minutes of the game’s main theme they did a five minute old school 8-bit rendition of it, before then switching back to a little six minute reprise of the orchestral version.

They were like the credits from a Ubisoft game, the perpetrators of the lengthiest credits up to this point in my journey, with Assassin’s Creed: Revelations and Driver: San Francisco both sporting incredibly chunky offerings.

I wouldn’t mind if there were thrilling things happening in these credits, or at least some pertinent info that was being imparted, but it’s mainly just useless listings. What’s the point in crediting some of these people? How much was the ‘Digital Distribution Manager of the Playstation Store’ really responsible for the game I just played, and honestly, who really gives a shit who that person is anyway?

Best name spotted in the mammoth credits? Edmund Zoo. Not sure what he did exactly, I was too busy cocking one eyebrow and nodding in amused approval as I noted his name.

I should also have noted the names of the people that did the additional voices for the enemies in SOCOM 4, as they featured a plethora of ridiculous accents. Cheesy South African, Cockney, and Aussie accents made it sound like they’d hired a bunch of tough guy actors from Lethal Weapon 2 and EastEnders, along with Bennett off Commando, then just got them drunk and recorded them messing about whilst taking the piss out their own acting.

But, aside from credit complaints and voice acting gripes, I actually didn’t think this one was too bad. Sure, it featured a totally generic, forgettable story, a bunch of barely sketched soldiers blowing stuff up for whatever nonsense reason they were going on about. But some of the missions were quite fun, and it was good to try out a variety of tactics through the directions you could issue to your squad.

I’m not really sure how the experience would have been using a normal controller, but I found that the Move and Sharpshooter combo was pretty enjoyable really. It was hard to calibrate perfectly, it would always end up a little off. It was floaty, and subsequently strayed as you played, but it was solid enough to still be playable. It suffered a little from the third person over-the-shoulder perspective as this sort of light gun game benefits from being in first person. There were also several sneaking levels, which were rather difficult to navigate. Stealth requires tight control and pinpoint movement, something the Sharpshooter doesn’t afford, and it was at its best when you were laying waste to a crowd with a hefty machine gun.

One other drawback was a physical one. I found that holding the gun up for extended periods was far too much effort for someone as lazy as me, so elbows on knees it was. Unfortunately the swiveling movement associated with aiming resulted in red, chafed knees. But I soldiered on, and ultimately it was an enjoyable afternoon spent finishing this one off, despite what my poor old knees had to say about it. I think I’ll save Killzone 3, the other Move compatible game in the pile, for another time when I’m again feeling the need for something different.

I loved the fact that this one was easy to get out of the way quickly, so I’m going with another military shooter that’s probably quite short for my next game, Medal of Honor. 

16 down, 34 to go.

In the battle of Man Vs Game....

I watch a lot of Man Vs Food, the show that sees human eating machine Adam Richman travelling America and eating a ton of tasty looking stuff. In each episode Adam tackles a local eating challenge of enormous proportions, be it a massive pizza, a five pound burrito, or, the one that sickens/impresses me the most, the time he ate fifteen dozen (180) oysters in 21 minutes.

Adam has since given up the challenges due to what I can only assume is the pressure of his doctor and loved ones worried for the state of his now seriously clogged arteries. So Adam now hosts Man Vs Food Nation, which sees him still visiting great pig-out joints, but coaching members of the public as they attempt the ridiculous sort of challenges that Adam’s poor, weakened heart and bowels can no longer endure.

Adam’s advice to these challengers is to keep a steady pace, and when the food starts to get to you, when everything starts to feel and taste the same, then the best thing you can do is to mix it up. Add condiments, change the texture, anything to give yourself the power to push on through.

There are many similarities between my commitment to tackle my huge pile of shame, and a Man Vs Food challenge. It’s an attempt to cram a load of something I love into a short space of time. Sometimes I get discouraged halfway through playing a title. Other times I feel like puking just from looking at the size of the task at hand, coupled with how much I’ve already devoured. When I get like that, I think of Adam.  

Before his untimely retirement Adam would always push through for the good of Man. He may have failed on occasion, but he’d always give more than seemed humanly possible, always managing to push through the food wall whether he finished the challenge or not. So I’m heeding Adam’s advice in order to push through my own personal wall. I’ve been keeping a steady pace, but things have started to get a bit stale and samey. Now I’m going to mix things up. I’m going to add condiments, change the texture.

About two years ago our friends and neighbours flew to Las Vegas to get married. They were gone for three weeks, and during that time we looked after their cat. When they returned they had bought us gifts to thank us for looking after their baby, and what they had bought me was this, the Sony SharpShooter:

This houses the Playstation’s motion controller, the Move. It let’s you play certain games as if you’re holding a real gun, just like those old arcade machines like Operation Wolf:

I've got two games that utilise the Sharpshooter, Killzone 3 and Socom 4, so I’m going to target them next. I’ve got about halfway through both games, so I should finish them off pretty quickly. It’ll be a totally different experience to just sitting back, feet up, with a controller in my hands. The combination of the Move and the Sharpshooter should be just the right condiments to change the texture.

And someday you'll feed on a tree frog...

What I love about the Metal Gear Solid games is their progressive innovation with each new entry. Every time new mechanics are introduced that hone the gameplay, increase the immersion, and provide a stellar entertainment experience. It’s never a huge jump that changes things dramatically. You can’t suddenly drive cars or fly helicopters. It’s always about the little touches.

In Metal Gear Solid the guards were there to be avoided and, at times, fought. You could bang on a wall to distract them one way, and then sneak past them on the other side. In MGS2 we were thrilled to discover that you could now interact with their dead or tranquilised bodies. You could hide them, stuff them into lockers, or throw them over the side of a ship. Not only that but you could sneak up behind unsuspecting guards, draw your gun and hold them at gunpoint. Aim at certain delicate parts of their anatomy and they’d wiggle their hips and shake out ammo to appease you. You could even shoot out the radio on their jacket so that they couldn’t contact HQ.

Once again in MGS3 it’s the little touches and advances that make the game so great. This time around you can sneak up and put a knife to your enemies’ throats, prompting them to not only give up ammo but vital information too. Interrogate them successfully and they’ll reveal the location of nearby weapons, pinpoint the location of other guards on your map, and they’ll even tell you which radio frequencies to call for health top ups and alert cancellation. From there you can use them as a human shield, choke them out, or slit their throats, it's up to you.

People always wonder when Jack Bauer gets the time to eat during one of his day long missions to save the world, and it's nice to see that this sort of thinking has been incorporated here. As Snake you're dropped into the jungle with no supplies, which means that you need to procure equipment onsite, including food. You're required to eat the local flora and fauna to keep your stamina and health up. If you don’t eat enough your stomach starts to grumble madly, loudly enough to be heard by suspicious guards and give away your position. 

You don't have to just stop at eating those little critters either,  you can capture poisonous animals and then throw them at the guards who’ll get bitten and die. If you fancy messing with the guards some more you can blow up their food storage huts and then nearby guards will be wandering around moaning about their aching bellies. Throw some rotten food at them, watch them gobble it up, and enjoy the messy consequences. All these touches and more combine with the established sneaky gameplay to make a rich and diverse experience.

This was the least convoluted, most streamlined entry in the series so far. There was minimal backtracking to previously completed areas. There was a huge decrease in the amount of time spent in the codec conversations, the weakest part of the Metal Gear Solid series. Who really wants to sit there watching two static heads have a conversation that is subtitled below them? And sometimes for 15 minutes at a time?!  Thankfully they were kept to a minimum here. MGS3 had the purest, uncluttered story, with minimal pointless jibber-jabber.

Of course, Hideo Kojima ultimately couldn’t help himself. It all got a bit flowery before the very end fight with ‘The Boss’, and she crapped on for about fifteen minutes about her life story. Then there were double crosses and even triple crosses all being thrown around in the last ten minutes, but by then it didn’t matter. The entire experience preceding that had been so enjoyable that I didn’t care. Even the crazy lyrics of the game’s Bond-esque theme song that make up the title for this post couldn’t dampen my enthusiasm for this one.

This is one of the best games I have ever played.

And now, without further ado, let’s get to the real story. What codename did I get upon completion? When replaying MGS and MGS2 recently I kind of rushed through them, receiving the codenames of Hyena and Elephant respectivey. Having completed them both before, and wanting to get them out of the way so I could get to this one, I threw caution to the wind. In this playthrough I was much more invested in a properly stealthy approach. I took my time and used every advantage I could. And I feel that I did pretty damn good. Behold, here is my ranking of.....

Panther! Not too shabby, I’m very happy with that!

So part of me wants to dive straight into Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, whereas another part thinks I should try to finish a previously started game first. I haven’t decided, I’ll have to have a think about it. Not for long though, I've still got a long way to go.

15 down, 35 to go.