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.

CoD:Black Ops (BlOps) Gameplay

My boy Chelios has been playing Blops (I’m making it happen people) as much as he can get away with while still maintaining a stable marriage. Over the next year it may cause a couple rocky patches so  he should probably invest now in some back-up dildos just to keep things sweet.

The wager matches are pimp and here he is with some pretty smooth kills in Sticks and Stones, which loads you out with a Crossbow, Ballistic Knives and a Hatchet to bankrupt your victim, separating them from their hard earned points.

What a bastard.

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.

Medal of Honor – Review

Beards of cool now, not creepy.

So I wasn’t going to buy Medal of honor. It came out too close to Black Ops for me to justify it but then the wife came to the rescue. She decided to trade in her Wii and all the games so she could get more Professor Layton games on the DS. I convinced her she should get me Medal of honor as well.

So here’s a quick review. It’s alright. End.

Ok so you want more detail. (I know you don’t just humour me.) The campaign is shorter, shorter than MW2 even. I think I did it in 5 or 6 hours, on normal. The game is stupidly easy. It’s dramatic and it’s cinematic but sometimes you just feel like you’re along for the ride, not actually knee deep in the shit.
There is a nice variety to the missions though so it never gets boring but it does feel like it’s all too brief. In the end I had fun for the brief time it went on but at the end I didn’t really feel like it had blown me away. (That’s what she said).

So multiplayer, it’s alright. The problem with FPS shooters is they seem to not realize why Call of Duty is so popular. In COD you have so much choice and variety. Lots of game modes, lots of maps, lots of weapons, lots of attachments, perks and so on. It’s what keeps you playing.
MOH isn’t a bad MP experience but I don’t know what would make me keep playing it. There are a total of about 12 weapons I think. You have to pick a rifleman class, a spec ops class or a sniper class. That’s it; you can barely customize your kit at all. So there is no drive to unlock things, once you’ve unlocked the red dot site for each weapon (or a better scope in the case of the sniper kit) there is nothing else useful to aim for.
The biggest problem for this game though is the spawn system and map design. There are several maps on the game where you can see from your side of the map all the way into the enemy spawn. Many a time playing over the weekend I found myself spawning and dying before I had a chance to move. I did the same thing if I’m honest. Found myself a nice little spot on the map and waited for people to spawn in.
It’s terrible, avoiding spawn camping should be a fundament of map design in a game of this kind. If you’re going to have fixed spawn points you shouldn’t be able to see them from across the map.

To sum up I’ll play this until black ops comes out but I doubt I’ll play after. It’s a good effort but too many fundamental mistakes take a way from the fun.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

Weeeeeeeeeee. So I’m back from a week off, to my outrage Chelios has posted a football game review, but he balanced it out by sharing my Civ V addiction and putting together a comprehensive list of what to expect from the Call of Duty: Black Ops multiplayer that I can’t afford to buy. While I was off I hit up the PSN store and grabbed me some demos, realised I was too late for Playstation Plus’ limited time offer of free Fallout 3 DLC (Nooooooooooooooooooo), realised no-one gives a shit about The Sims 3 Barnacle Bay DLC on PC and celebrated a 1st birthday. Good times.

On with the show.

I have a lot of time for platformers.

Designers of successful games must pull off the extraordinary feat of getting you to repeat the exact same moves for ten to forty to sixty plus hours without it numbing the mind like when I saw an 8 year old fall head first into the frozen vegetable section of Tesco.

Platformers are in principle an easy way of accomplishing this because you have a basic skill set; run, jump, shoot and can graft those moves onto any environment to keep the pace motoring along. However, it’s not as easy as all that as proven by any awful platformer you care to mention. For some reason I can only think of Jurassic Park right now, I think the Mega Drive version.

Good gameplay, that all encompassing handle of vaguery, is essential of course. Mario 64 has the bare essentials as well as the blueprint for every game of it’s ilk you’ve played in the last 15 years. Story is fast emerging as the new staple. It is almost on a par with compelling gameplay as a motivation for beating the next enemy, getting to that ledge, grabbing that next item. Though it is story that propels you forward it is ultimately how the game feels that pulls you on.

And (yes I think sometimes it is acceptable to start a sentence with “and”) so in a roundabout way we drop in on Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, a game with the distinction of being co-written by screenwriter Alex Garland. While I think games should very much not try to be movies I have no problem with a professional screenwriter having a hand in dialogue. Games on the whole need an improvement in how the characters get over.

Also, there's a slinky redhead of course.

Having no money I must sate myself with the demo. A burly man lucks out of his pod on a flying prison barge. He chases a female escapee to an escape unit, through combat bots and a crumbling ship to be held against his will by the girl upon landing in a decayed future New York by use of a neural something, which puts the brain hurt on. So far, so fine. I’m perfectly happy for there to be a bit of mystery (why was the dude in prison (falsely or for rebelling against fascism I’ll wager) and why does the woman want to get to where she’s going and just how will their relationship ultimately develop (into a situation where they pork, I’ll wager)? And blah blah blah.

You can see where it’s going but the characters themselves actually seemed to have a little subtlety to them, overt and hammy but there nonetheless. Only time will tell if it turns out that way.

Gameplay then. It’s fine. It’s no Uncharted of course, but then what is? You leap from ledge to handhold and back again and fight almost exclusively in melee though there’s bound to be a ranged weapon later on. The camera gets right up front with the action and I didn’t once find it to screw around the way it so often can.

If I get some money I’ll buy Enslaved. If it costs up to thirty pounds, but chances are I’m effing skint for two months at least.

Win The Sims 3 Barnacle Bay NOW

WIN THE SIMS 3 BARNACLE BAY FREE BARNACLE BAY FREE SIMS 3 DLC FREE EXPANSION PACK PRIZE GIVEAWAY WIN WIN WIN TODAY.

Suck on that search engines.

Today and tomorrow follow us on Twitter, ReTweet this phrase

RT for a chance to win a #Sims3 Barnacle Bay download code from The Sims Online Store & @gamesburp

and you are in with a chance of winning one of three Sims 3 Barnacle Bay expansion pack codes.

I know your commanding officer told you never to Retweet but you must trust me now. Retweet and you could win.

Three winners will be picked at random whereby I will contact you for your email address and you will be emailed the code.

Simples.

The Sims Free Barnacle Bay Giveaway

The Sims Free. Ha ha, do you see? It means two things.

So you have The Sims 3 and you you’re thinking “This Barnacle Bay fandango, is it worth shelling out money for?”

Well stop right there partner, think no further because we are giving away three download codes for The Sims 3 Barnacle Bay expansion pack  absolutely goddamn free.

Yes some loco people actually decided our humble site was worthy of being a portal to gift three of you lucky souls with free gear (not that kind of gear).

It would usually run you 1,600 Sim points. I have no idea what that means exactly but it sure sounds expensive if you have no money or like free stuff. Yet also it sounds reasonable enough for those of you that have a little change, like a real value experience.

All you need to do to be in with a chance of winning is start by following us on Twitter today. This will save you time clicking an extra button in the near future.Then keep a beady little eye out for the next two days, that’s Tuesday 19th and Wednesday 20th October, ReTweet our special Tweet and that’s it. We’ll pick the winners on Thursday 21st and be in touch.

You could unfollow us straight after if you really wanted but that’s kind of a dick move.

So, Tuesday 19th and Wednesday 20th October retweet us our super obvious message and you could win one of three Sims 3 Barnacle Bay download codes.

You must already have a legitimate copy of The Sims 3 for this to work.

Make me look good here friends.

P.s. Don’t retweet this post or the accompanying twitter link to this post. We will tweet a separate tweet for you to retweet. Got that? Sweet.

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.

Eurogamer Expo – All Over

So I’ve pretty much milked this Expo for all it was worth. It is now a saggy teat at the business end of a deflated bag of redundant gaming news.

There was a whole bunch there that I did not play, the Zelda queue played a big part in that. *shakes fist impotently*

So I missed out on Fable III which I did want to play because I hated the first, liked what I played of the second and I had a complete 180 on my opinion of Peter Molyneux. I used to think he was just some bullshitter but have since realised that he’s just so excited when talking about his games that can not help blurting out some inaccurate point. It’s endearing really, I have a friend the exact same way. Also I wanted to play it because this picture.

What you are seeing is the player character dressed as a young maiden kissing the ghost of a playwrite trying to complete his production. I have no idea why but I know that this a game I need to play.

I also missed out on Brink because the reps could not organise a fart in a bar and it was getting late. I missed out on Enslaved but I’m downloading the demo now. I avoided Rock Band 3 like your clap riddled sister. I did not play on Kinect because they were not showing any proper games for it. I missed out on Donkey Kong Returns and Kirby’s Epic Yarn which was a mistake.

The Expo itself felt like a great place to be. It was all friendly, the queues were fairly free-form but nobody acted like a prick. The only time there was an actual line (goddammit Zelda) and I called out this one guy who was trying to push past me, he acted cool about it so kudos to the organisers for somehow producing this atmosphere. By all accounts though there was a higher than average douche allotment waiting for Gears of War 3.

Next year I think I’ll have more of a game plan and will definitely pull my thumbs out of my ass when it comes to taking photos. Also Chelios has twelve months notice that we are going instead of the four he had this year which was not long enough to arrange a day off.

Maybe next year I’ll actually be able to score a press pass.

P.S. That will never happen.

 

SOCOM 4 with PS Move

Part of Eurogamer Expo 2010

 

So I plain forgot to get pictures of this, which is probably a blessing considering my camera skills.

SOCOM 4 seems like a fairly decent and involved third person shooter (Thirps?). You’re some kind of guy and you are required to shoot people and blow things up and so on. In a demo hall all that stuff is kind of by the by.

This was present on regular controlled PS3s but half of those were crashed out all day so I only got to play this on Move. It was both good and bad in this respect.

My only motion control shooter experience is Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and that was a damn fine experience. Pin-point accuracy the whole time, fluid and intuitive movements. It played exactly how you would want. PS Move has sub-millimeter accuracy so should be a blast too right? If I had ten minutes to dick around with the settings then yes, conceivably. I would eliminate the bounding box, the free movement zone your reticule has before it moves the viewable screen around, straight away. It moved too slowly horizontally compared to how it moved vertically so when you had to engage combatants on your plane and then shift to those above or below you, it was disorienting.

The targeting was very nice, it pointed exactly where I wanted and you can’t ask more than that. It’s better than auto-aim. The Move controller worked just fine and when a decent enough game can utilise it well I will be happy to buy one.

Make no mistake, I probably will not buy SOCOM 4 because I have better things to be getting on with than another shooter, but if I was given it I wouldn’t be sad about it.

Video from E3 of the section I demoed.