DC Universe Online Beta

Well it doesn’t get any nerdier than this. Not only is it a video game but it’s an MMO video game. Not only that but it’s based on comics. Simply by downloading the beta client I instantly became 30% less attractive to the opposite sex.

My average handsomeness aside, DCUO is a big deal not least because it requires a substantial investment from you.

First off the disc costs £30 at least. Next you must subscribe at a monthly price point of £9.99. Then you must invest your time, because if I’m paying a sub every goddamn month then I will play at every opportunity I’m given.

Cracking one out? That means you’ve got one free hand mister (or ms).

Taking a shit? Time to invest in a commode.

So what do you get for your money? Why exactly should you drop cash on DCUO?

First you must create a superhero that you will be unhappy with in some small way for as long as you can stand to keep them.  Then you must select a generic power and combat skill which will be mismatched and will underwhelm you, at first. Then simply witness your super being birthed into a world of other people whose pseudo-DC avatars are making them feel the exact same way.

But damn it I WILL enjoy this.

I chose flying and then wished I’d chosen super speed. Then a grew to like the flying animations, they’re pretty smooth and handy for carrying stuff. I mooched around Gotham and beat up some guys, smashed some stuff and rescued some people. The tasks themselves were just happening and I just kind of ticked the objectives off the list. So far, so pedestrian.

What it really needs to give it meaning is context and just as I was getting fed up, so Batman chimes in and wants me to put down some thugs. So now I’m part of a world and I have a purpose. So I take out some thugs, smash some stuff….

Then I need to rescue Batwoman because she’s too smokin’ hot to escape from the Scarecrow. So I go fight him and smash some stuff. Then I fly around Gotham to see if I can scare a civilian by taking them up a tall building but I don’t really see anyone.

DCUO has a huge stock of source material and a potentially neverending stream of content. Whenever I began to go through the motions there’d be a new quest thread or I’d level up and gain a new trait to expand my skill set. You’re flying can get faster, you can tag on an extra move to your combo or develop a new power.

As it’s the beta, it’s unfair to criticise it based on glitches so I won’t go into that. It did however, have an air of being a little bit, well, boring.

Everyone has their costume which looks like the kind of costume an ordinary person would come up with. Which it is. Then some powers, so I had flight and fire. No real reason for this combination. Just because. Then I knew martial arts. Again no particular reason why I would know martial arts.

In The Incredibles Syndrome said of his plan to give powers to all ordinary peoples “when everyone’s super…..no one will be”.

That’s kind of what DCUO does. It’s like a massive, un-licensed DIY superhero costume party.

I could live with this though, partly because that’s an awesome idea and partly because there is the promise of tons of adventures and you do get to fight with the big characters but then another thing gets stuck in the craw.

The subscription.

I understand it costs a lot to make an MMO and to continue supporting it with new content. But come on. £10 a month.

If you can buy your PSN cards cheaper than their value, which is possible, then it’ll be slightly less. For pushing into a new market on console I expected an innovative new payment plan which took account of the fact console gamers by definition and virtue of their machine, will by-and-large play many games, and will not want to be tethered to one indefinitely. A standard sub does this.

I want to play this game, I really do. But I can’t justify that price month after month, and the amount of time that is worth, plus the other games that I will want to play. Then I’ll feel I need to keep playing or I lose my character and everything I invested. Sony Online Entertainment also operate Free Realms, a micro-transaction oriented family MMO. It make huge revenue. Lord of the Rings Online just tripled their income by moving from subs to free-to-play. DCUO needs to get with the times to go mainstream.

DCUO is good, it just isnt…Super.

Gran Turismo 5 Manual is Disappointing

Hi cats and kittens, sorry I haven’t posted in a week I’ve been trying to make plans and I had a little time off and so on down the list of excuses but in my defence; your face!

So I won’t own GT5 for another month but I know a man who does and instead of a 200 page colossus flopping out of his package (is it ever impossible to insert a dick joke?)(Heh-heh….insert a dick heh heh heh.) he was greeted with a ten page misery.

I love game manuals, it’s part of the ritual; the smell of it, the quality of the paper, the blurb. The game manual though is on its way out. Why sure I can see why. For one it’s much cheaper to do without in terms of materials cost. For another games are much more accessible these days and so the general audience can easily pick up a well designed game just from playing the opening levels. More games use the method of “show don’t tell” and include tutorial levels, even if they aren’t named as such. Most people probably just don’t read the manual, preferring instead to just jump right in, and I can respect that.

For me the manual was what I had to cherish between getting the game and playing the game. Be it christmas or birthday mornings where I’d have all the presents unwrapped but not access to the machine, or getting bought one in town and needing to interact with the game in some way on the journey home. Like I say; ritual. I guess we as a gaming audience grew up and were able to buy our own games and even play on them whenever we want (whenever we want ladies, that’s right I set my own bedtime) so the manual becomes an obstacle.

The game manual just has less to offer, control schemes are by and large intuitive and similar across a genre (any FPS will handle more or less the same), nobody cares about the warnings and concept art is a whole other thing and can get more money as Special Edition addendums or art books in their own right. The one for Okami is fucking lush by the way.

The games which would be well served by a manual tend to go a different route. Civilization V is one of the last games I bought and contained a couple hundred paged PDF. They cited the reason of saving paper for this delivery method and as they had clearly put a lot of work and a healthy dash of charm into it, I found no reason to argue that this was the correct decision. I was going to be on a computer anyway, right?

So it’s just one of those things that gets left by the wayside when progress is made. I don’t disagree with it, it’d be stupid to include a useless manual for nostalgia alone. I guess I’ve got plenty of old ones hanging around though. And at the end of the day it’s ultimately the game itself which inhabits the memory. It’s just a shame that a habit dies.

Undead Nightmare Review

You know how in crime dramas the detective usually makes slow progress to uncover the mystery? Sometimes though, right at the start he knows who did it and the rest is merely academics.

Similarly, let’s get right down to the crux of this thing.

Undead Nightmare is a post ejaculation blow job. Not strictly necessary to proceedings and you may not be able to get into it directly after the main thrust, but it’s very pleasant and welcome nonetheless.

Go play the main story in Red Dead Redemption if you haven’t already and I’ll see you in 20-30 hours depending on how sidetracked you get, which you will.

So after John Marston kills Dutch and returns to his family, Undead Nightmare drops in on the homestead and throws a plague of the undead down on the kitchen table. However inconvenient it is to the guy, it’s pretty entertaining for us and the placement of it within the main story is pitched just right. A time where several months elapse and many things can be assumed to have happened “off screen” as it were.

The family get bit so you have to tie them up, barricade them in the cabin and jolly well ride out to find a cure. John is nothing if not a man of action. Humanity was lovingly woven into RDR, no matter its leanings, disgraces, prejudices and triumphs and it is good to see that Rockstar have put the same effort into this content, and not just booted it out of the door armed with whatever they cut from the main story. Every person has a theory on the undead thumping about above ground. The government. The Jews. Gravedigger Seth. Mexicans. Sin. Anything people fear. Which is everything across the spectrum if you sample a large enough group.

Anyway John must ride back out west to see what the to-do is all about. He reconnects with various people from his main adventure, most unimportant to the plot but it helps to re-establish the neurons. It makes it feel as if it is a world, as surely these would naturally be places one would be drawn to.

Zombies are everywhere these days and the comfort is that we only fall over them in the street figuratively. This almost played out genre is thoroughly acceptable here because for one it is Rockstar, who we have come to trust. And for another because this western was so refreshing to us, by association the follow on content is as well. It exists under RDR’s graces for the most part but that is not to deny that it is a good piece of work in its own right. The application is the thing.

After all’s said and done most of the stuff is merely a skin. There are four types of Zombie and any animals are the same as their main game counterpart except for an “undead” prefix. Fine. My favourite part though, is how bodies of water on the map are displayed in red. Subtle but nice.

As with RDR the main plus is the lighting and environment. They’ve introduced a mist. A small alteration but you can see it floating over lowlands or while you’re in it at sunrise it will eerily illuminate the sky. It is the very faintest of nuances but expertly done.

The general mechanics are all the same. We have some new challenges for the journal; undead hunter, undead sharpshooter and so on. You may choose to liberate a town from a zombie onslaught for which you earn a new weapon and valuable ammunition, so we are encouraged to do so if we want to remain effective. A canny move to extend the play time, and far from un-enjoyable.

There are clear graveyard missions and bounty hunts are now missing person side quests. A particular highlight is the addition of mythical beasts. We have Sasquatch in the mountains, Chupacabra in Mehico and the four horses of the Apocalypse. The four horses give you almost unlimited stamina to get around quicker along with a fiery offensive from War and head bursting goodness from Death.

This gets into a small problem I have, with this and RDR. I want to level up, so I try to complete side tasks before I complete the main story. I want to get all the outfits so that I can use their benefits while there is still an actual point to playing. I understand that there must be a fine line walked here. If it is too easy to level up too early in the main quest then the game becomes too easy or is subject to an enemy difficulty grading in accordance with your abilities. Part of the charm of Red Dead is that even with a boss, such as they exist here, a headshot is still a headshot so the grading does not fit in. This leaves the essential placement of the levelling up segments.

Here’s my problem, I’ve completed the story on RDR and Undead Nightmare before collecting all the additional skills and items. So now I have no reason to go for unfinished outfits except to be completist, but as they serve a function I want to get some function out of them. Thus I now feel no need to revisit either the main game or this DLC to really finish up.

That said, the way Undead Nightmare ends by  slotting back into the main story is inspired. Slipping back into John’s worn boots is great after the surprise of being forced to ride around as that little gobshite Jack Marston.

“Work ya damn nag”. Shudder.

So yes, you do want to buy this. It is one of the better DLCs out of any game you care to mention. You can enjoy it on its own and pretty soon you can buy the standalone version on disc but for the full enjoyment and appreciation you need to have played and completed Red Dead Redemption.

But Of Course Hutch has played Black Ops Multiplayer

In the interests of whoring up some cheap hits I’m posting Black Ops content just one day before release.

So Hutch is probably the most famous if not the most successful COD player, being picked up by Machinima like some truck stop hooker only instead of receiving a bludgeoning and shallow burial they gave him a job. Thumbs up for him, and he’s a natural choice to forward a copy of Black Ops and have in what appears to be a press lobby. Here he is getting a bit of a hammering (like the truck stop hooker) but also giving back and coming out ok (unlike the lay by temptress).

The advance your weapon every time you score a kill match type.

And standard Team Deathmatch

Well there we are. I hope you weren’t expecting John Simpson quality journalism here.

The Undergarden

There’s probably some kind of legal impediment to prevent me from actually recommending you get stoned on the 10th of November.

So in an unrelated matter I will use the term “fisting” and its variants and you can take that to mean whatever the hell you want it to mean. I wont judge.

When November 10th rolls around you’ll be thinking

“just another Wednesday, why bother with getting fisted today?”

then

“shit the bed, it’s time for the weekly PSN and/or XBL updates, exclamation point”

then you’ll stumble across a brand spankers title by the newly re-invigorated Atari.

Atari have been around forever, they went the way of Sega before Sega went the way of Sega and now back under the wing of original co-founder Nolan Bushnell, they are after the online download only short game market. It’s probably one of the gaming sectors with most potential for growth.

Anyway, this title called Undergarden may pop out at you especially if you have, mere moments before, dabbled in a spot of fisting. If you had not then seeing the link window on your screen will probably make you want to get fisted straight away.

“But Professor Robot” (that’s me kids) you’ll cry “I spend all my money on fisting and/or I’m far to fisted too access the buy screen right now”

Well fear not because those peeps over at Atari (who may or may not have been getting their fist on while developing this title) have decided to release some sweet, sweet Demo time for you. So if you’re like me and have no money then pop on and have a look. If you have money then get the Demo so you know whether to spend that money on this. It’s win-win and you cannot fail.

Unless you’re so fisted you can’t actually stand to get to your TV.

I will most certainly be hankering after the demo, I shall leave it to your imaginations whether I shall be getting fisted while doing so. It looks kind of like an HD flash game. Hopefully you can mook around with the settings because I’d really like to reduce the ambient light and push up the contrast to emphasize those neons going on, really make it pop. It’s actually a 20 level puzzler so you’ll be able to engage some of that left brain function as a bonus.

If you can imagine PixelJunk Eden lounging around getting fisted with PixelJunk Shooter on a beanbag with the water levels of Donkey Kong Country instigating the whole affair, then that’s pretty close to what we have here.

So how can you not want to at least check it out?

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Simples.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2

So this one kind of crept up on us. This is released in two weeks and I had forgotten about it entirely.

I didn’t buy the first and though I’m not particularly sorry about that based on reports I had of it, I did want to see some cool parts. I wanted the boner jams of the game rather than the actual game, all the coolness distilled into a 1 hour game with all the shit left out. I played the demo which was floppy and confused but I dug the lightsaber and powers. I sometimes think the entire franchise hinges on the lightsaber and how awesome it is. I especially like the underhand style of sword fighting so it’s a double plus that the second installment has two, one for each hand, now isn’t that convenient. I don’t want to think about where they’re going to take the next game.

Here’s the great E3 2010 trailer

I played the demo yesterday and it is a big improvement. The controls, once used to them, are much tighter. By which I mean it feels much more as if you are in control especially when it comes down to mixing up your combat technique. This is where we see dividends to improved force grip targeting which has been tweaked and is now a much more reliable system. Trading saber and force powers in an offensive is now thoroughly pleasurable.Strike down this guy, mind trick that guy into suicide and force lightning those guys etc etc…..

I wouldn’t feel bad about buying this even though the protagonist is named Starkiller.

The demo has you escaping a cloning facility on Comino? Is that right? Anyway because apparently you died in the previous game you now control a clone of yourself, you smell something up and decide to crash out of there to follow the advice of the voices coming from your head. Cue slicing your way through endless stormtroopers which glow at the wound once severed into three pieces. You destroy some expensive looking shit and beat cheeks before Vader shows up to try and ruin your day. It’s typical Star Warsy stuff and you know it’s made by fans which is good because fan made Star Wars media is mostly better than actual Star Wars media.

Colour me interested. Wom.

That wom was my pretend lightsaber dramatically exclamating my opinion into your face.

Wom.

Gran Turismo 5, also in 3D

Expectations are high. After more than 4 years in development Polyphony Digital need to produce the gaming equivalent of finger banging the audience to a post orgasmic climax. I like to think of it as a sexual finishing move.

But enough about your mum.

This pretty much needs to be a benchmark for quality. It wont be so great for a party time fun bash like you may think Burnout or Need for Speed is, but let’s be fair, it does have kart racing. What they’ve done with karts is let you know they don’t take themselves too seriously while still not making a popcorn racer, and keeping a game design pedigree.

It is painfully detailed and it pays off. All the little details that you perhaps cannot identify individually without some effort, collude to beam directly into your brain the feeling that you are watching something very realistic.

The lighting, the physics, the reflections, the dirt, the focus blur, the motion blur and the sound.

The sound.

I started off having accidentally chosen a manual gearbox. Now when I start off something like this, the most recent similar game being Forza 3, I like to get the feel of the cars and so put on an automatic gearbox to avoid having something else to think about. On a related side note the most annoying thing about a racing “simulator” is the propensity to completely misjudge your speed and turn into a corner only to oversteer dramatically going, in fact, in a completely straight line and crashing.

So I’m on the start line fully aware that I’m going to have to gear manually, also it’s a new game to get the hang of and I’m supposed to be paying attention so I can hack together some bullshit preview for my un-viewed blog.

Fucking love the R8

I hear the car rev and I nearly shit. I don’t care how prototypically blokey this makes me appear, how adolescently loutish but when I hear a big car engine roar it is heaven. Makes me feel ten years old again with models of Lamborghinis on my windowsill and pictures of Lotuses on the wall. From an intellectual standpoint it is the wonder of the progression of engineering genius that has led to the current range of motors. And personally I’ve almost come to accept the fact that I will probably never own a supercar, so this game is in all likelihood the closest I will ever get it.

So now all my points come together like a bukkakke money shot. (Four Ks in bukkakke, right?)

I’m off the line and I realise I would probably buy this game for the sounds alone. If the game has a soundtrack, and that soundtrack is racing noise I will not be disappointed. In fact I’ll probably play it in my car while I’m driving. Anyway, I clumsily start to get the feel of shifting the gears for which you must rely on engine noise and in the beginning, the briefest of glances at the rev counter. Oh shit there’s a corner so now where I’d usually hammer the breaks, try to gas through the turn and slide into the barrier what happens is I drop shift to a gear below where I need it out of panic pressing, slow right the hell down then advance a gear into the turn, my revs drop and I power out.

Turns out I should always have run a manual game, and you should too and I’ll tell you why. If you want just an arcade experience and that’s all you ever want then you can drive an automatic but to be fair, if that’s what you want there are a ton of other games you should be playing. If you want to be involved and get your teeth into this then play the manual setting from the start. It may be tougher at first but you will get better faster and more comprehensively.

When I was learning to play bass I decided to exclude using my little fingers because it was easier to just leave them out as they are naturally not as dextrous. This was a mistake because when it came time to play more complex licks I really needed to bring them in and re-learning to include them was a bitch. I still don’t use the pinkie of my plucking hand because it is ridiculously, disproportionately small but that’s another matter.

Please enjoy another screen to break up the article

So I’m riding pretty high throughout my lap. I’m taking corners better than I could have ever expected, the scenery is gorgeous, the car is absolutely pristine and the noises primal. The revs, the sound of the road, the bumps (you know, the red and white bits, what the hell are they called again……..?) everything just kind of marries up and satisfies you. Very impressive stuff.

3D

Right so exactly the same set up but in 3D. The 3D demos didn’t last a full lap even but I assume it plays the same.

The car was an image to behold. The way the glass and metal gleamed together with how the rear of the car was very discernibly closer than the back window showed how clear the 3D is. They obviously have put a lot of work into getting the dimensions of the vehicles just right. The environments move to fast to work in 3D though. It’s the same in even the best 3D movie. Quick scenes just don’t cut it, they appear choppy and jittery and it does not work. Which is a shame because the car in 3D looks near as perfect as  I can imagine.

So to summarize, you can keep your fancy third dimension, I’m happy to cream it on the sofa with my two thank you very much

inFamous 2

Part of Eurogamer Expo 2010

This was strange because inFamous 2 was stuck in an obscure corner of the expo with only two active TVs which were facing away from the show floor. So unless you approached because you were interested in PixelJunk Shooter then chances are you wouldn’t get to see this. When we rolled around to it about halfway through the day barely anyone was loitering. And what a shame because like the first, inFamous 2 is shaping up to be a gem.

You still play Cole only this time in a fictional New Orleans (N’Orleans) city and he is still smashing heads using his electrical powers.

 

See?

 

Aside from me being annoyed that they use the word “Vortexes” instead of “Vortices” it plays very well and is a natural extension of inFamous.

First there was a melee sequence where Cole uses his new amp stick to channel his powers into blunt force. The camera pulls right up to him and sticks you in the action, when you deliver the final blow it slows down a little and almost crash zooms. As it does this you are able to maintain your orientation in the space and also instinctively know where the next enemy is. You can switch instantly between melee targets with fluidity and all in all it’s very wholesome.

Next there was a chase where Cole must grind the power lines and use static thrusters to run down a limo. This is one of those games where as a sequel it is leaving the fundamentals of the original unchanged but also adding story and enough new mechanics to feel as if something new is going on. It’s like the second season of a great television show. If you wanted something totally different, you’d change channel and watch something else, but you do want new plotlines.

Slick gameplay.

Killzone 3………..D

Part of Eurogamer Expo 2010

If only your eyes were able to process visual information in 3 dimensions, loser.

Killzone 3 impressed the hell out of me. This pre Alpha build was solid and completely stable the whole time I saw it, on top of that the 3D was absolutely pristine.

There were two pairs of 3D glasses per TV so spectators could view without thinking they had a concussion. I duly put them on and saw the blurriness clear up, but I was still seeing the double image. My job enables me to view 3D content on an almost daily basis so I’m no newbie to the scene. My eyes adjusted 20 seconds later and the image just came to me.

A nicely interpreted depth solution exists in Killzone 3. This is a noncey way of saying all the planes blend seamlessly together, and importantly the cross hair stays accurate and true across whichever depth it encounters.

These guys are in a war zone right now

Onto gameplay, I’ve declared my lack of passion for the FPS genre numerous times but here they just have it right. Bodies have weight, they don’t take too many or too few shots. Also, jetpack. I almost bought Dark Void purely on the strength that it had a jetpack in it. Here it is short burst and more of an extended jump tool, but you can use it to advance your position and take the strategic upper hand in a confrontation so it has incidental use, making it more than just a gimmick.

This was overall the best of the 3 3D games there.