A Challenging Game

 Gaming, Personal, Ramblings  No Responses »
Mar 012011
 

Earlier this week Joysiq shared an article that absolutely flawed me. Terry Garret, a 23 year old student from Colorado, managed to complete Abe’s Exodus despite one major setback. Terry is completely blind!

He has learnt to play the game purely based on the sounds and effects in the game, the only help he required was for someone to first explain the menus for him so that he could properly save the game.

What is below is a little video of him playing the game while explaining how he does it & how good the sound editing was on the Abe allowing for this to even be possible.

This must have been one hell of a challenge for Terry and I have nothing but respect for him for managing it, I hope he finds more games he can finish and that designers out there pay attention to this as an example of the importance of proper sound design.

It also however got me thinking, Where has the challenge gone in my gaming?

I used to really enjoy challenges in my gaming, hours would be lost to a challenging level in a game or to a puzzle that required second perfect actions. Those were great times, but then they were also times when I had something I believe was called ‘free time’.

I say believe as its been that long since I had any I am not sure it ever really existed. It may just be a figment of my overworked imagination.

Anyway the point was that seems to have gone away when it comes to my gaming experience. That is not to say that is gone from games in general – there are many games that are as challenging as the classics, but there has also a lot of them that have followed a trend towards simpler, more casual friendly experience.

Also please don’t mistake this for an Anti-Casual rant, There are elements of the casual side of things that really please me now. Being able to drop in and out of an MMO when I have a spare moment or two without having to worry about dedicating hours is a godsend.

No, the point I’m getting at is that this kid has made me realise that I have become overly casual in my gaming.

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A Journey into the wasteland

 Gaming, Personal  No Responses »
Jan 292011
 

As I briefly mentioned to Gow at the end of Drinky Talky Thing #3 someone has made an incredible Fallout based fan film.

Following the adventures of Twig, a former occupant of Vault 10 as he searches the wasteland for his favourite beverage – Nuka Cola. Joining him in his travels are Ben the ghoul & Scarlett a sexy former slave girl. These 3 misfits do not have the best of times in the wasteland, running up against both merchants & bounty hunters.

Seriously I don’t want to say too much about this as it really should be watched and enjoyed – but suffice to say I really hope someone with a bit of budget comes and helps these guys continue this trios story. I could easily see this becoming a great series if written well. I would particularly like to see the series of events that lead to this trio wandering the wasteland together, perhaps this would form part of a flashback episode.

Anyway its time you saw it – so watch

A Portal between Platforms

 Gaming  No Responses »
Jan 182011
 

Even robots enjoy a good Hug!

One of the best new games of recent years is the incredible Portal. So it was hardly surprising when they announced a sequel was to be released in the first quarter of this year. One of the ways they are expanding on the first game, is the inclusion of co-op play. Now this is great but it did cause me a little concern for a single reason, I don’t know what platform the rest of my friends will be buying it on.

Now I’ve already pretty much set my mind on the PC version, because of the Razer Hydra, but some of the people I would like to play it with are console fanatics. Until now I, and probably many other, had assumed that it would only allow you to play with people of the same format. PC with PC, PS3 with PS3 etc.

Today however Valve announced that I was wrong. It seems that when they said that the PS3 would be the best console version of the game, they were not kidding.

They announced officially that the PS3 version would come with Steam integrated and would allow you to play cooperatively with your friends on the PC & Mac. This is a great move as while cross-platform has been tried before, it has never really succeeded.

As well as that the PS3 users will be able to make use of a bunch of the other Steam, such as cross platform chat and the ability to upload their saved games to steams cloud-based storage. Why would they want to do that with their saves? Oh because they will also be given a Steam code that will give them the PC version.

But it’s not simply what this could mean for Portal 2 that interests me in this announcement, it’s the future games that could make use of this new Steam cross-platform functionality.

Cross-platform has pretty much failed in the past for a single reason, the games that have had that ability have been for the most part competitive titles. This means that there has been and unfair advantage to one side or the other (normally the PC) due the control schemes just being better suited to it.

However Co-op play does not have the same pitfall, in fact Co-op is actually enhanced by having different control schemes as it allows the players to pick the one that is best for them. It is my hope that this functionality proves popular, as if it does I would not be surprised to see a whole pile of games either using or planning to use the technology by the end of the year (obviously assuming Valve are willing to share it).

One genre I could see making really solid use of it is the RPG market, I’m looking to you Bethesda, I would love to see it as possible to play for players to be able to jump in and out of each others Skyrim game. Obviously the primary storyline and quests would remain single player, but I would like to have the opportunity to work together with a friend on some of the side quests. Perhaps it could even be a way experiencing some of the quests locked away by my choices in my version of the world, without having to start again.

Anyway, I am starting to lose the track of this – basically this news is not only great for Portal 2, but in my opinion has a lot of potential for the future of Co-op & RPG gaming if studios make use of it.

Good News for Spider-man Games

 Gaming  No Responses »
Jan 172011
 

All heroes should wear a hat, everyone looks cooler in a hat.

The week we launch an issue of Thirteen1 there is little time to spare for browsing news sites. So you will forgive me for the fact that this news is a few days old now, but I’ve only just caught up with it.

So this week Activision made an announcement about the future of the Spider-man gaming franchise. The news was good, they have put the makers of Spider-man: Shattered Dimensions, Beenox Studio, in charge of the licence from here on in.

Personally I couldn’t be happier about this, as Shattered Dimensions was a bloody good game in my opinion. One element I particularly enjoyed was the brief wanderings into the ‘Marvel Noir’ universe.

This stealth section of the game was a great way to break up the near constant combat of the other three universes in the game.

I have since gone on to buy several of the Noir comics, and really love how they manage to be completely different while still remaining true to their original source.

The Spider-man Noir however  has not been one of them as its out of print, so the cheapest I’ve seen it before tonight is £35. However while writing this post I decided to look again and managed to find it for £10 - Bargain! I’ll let you know my opinion on it once it arrives.

What makes it better is that back at GamesCom in august of last year, Thomas Wilson the Creative Director at Beenox said that he would love to focus on just one Spider-man universe. He also said that if it were up to him, he would want it to be either the Noir or 2099 Universe.

I hope he gets his way, I would love to see a full game based in the Noir universe. Obviously the camera glitches would have to be fixed and the combat bulked out a little, but this universe has the potential to make an incredible stealth/investigation game.

I will certainly be watching for more news on this front.

Unsung from the rooftops

 Gaming, Personal  No Responses »
Jan 102011
 

Today I saw a link on twitter to an interesting article on the Wall Street Journal website. I do occasionally check this site for some of the interesting news in technology, some of the their writers are good. However there is one section of news that I would not look there for – Gaming news.

Apart from the occasional article related to the finances of companies, such as news on Zynga’s profits and privacy breaches, gaming is not exactly what their core demographic want to read about. However that does not excuse the sheer ineptitude of the article in question.

Here is the article

The Unsung Videogame Heroes of 2010
No Mario Kart. No Beatles. No Halo. Here are the titles that existed under the surface of the hype but still delivered hours of fresh action for gaming pro and rookie alike

Check it out here http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576060003073227560.html

Did you go check it out? Are you done laughing yet?

These are supposed to be the games that got missed, the ones that slipped under the radar. Looking at the list I can only find one that would fit into the group and then only in comparison to everything else on the list and stretch the definition.  That would be Dance Central, overall its a fun new title that slipped under the radar kinda, if you count being eclipsed be the technology that the game was released to take advantage of.

Dance Central was nothing more that the Kinect’s answer to Just Dance, but it did what it was supposed to do and that was to take advantage of (show off) the power of the Kinect’s full body motion sensing technology. But it was the universally accepted as one of the best launch titles for the device.

So as you see I had to stretch it a bit there.

But the rest of the title’s most certainly hyped up to the eyeballs and then had an extra dollop of hype slapped on top for good measure. There is not a single game in this list that has not sold millions, or been praised by critics and gamers alike.  Just take a look at this list, and I would like you to try and see what other fault I spotted with their description of the list.

Fallout: New Vegas, Mass Effect 2, Gran Turismo 5, Super Street Fighter 4, God of War III, Goldeneye 007, Tiger Woods 11 & The Force Unleashed II.

Spotted it yet? Yes that is right the are all sequels, with the exception of Goldeneye 007 which is a remake.  So how exactly they all ‘delivered  hours of fresh action’ with that fact in mind just put the proverbial cherry on top of the whole thing.

Now as I made sure to mention at the very start of this post that the Wall Street Journal are not exactly known for its gaming credentials. However I find it incredibly difficult to believe that nobody at all in their editorial process saw this article and didn’t at least recognise 1 of these titles that should not have been there, then used that question the accuracy of the thing.

This is all before you get into the details of what they have actually written about the games themselves. Kratos is after Ares in God of War III? I’m sure we finished him off long ago? RPG’s are nothing more than pressing A to attack & B to defend, while New Vegas requires complex tactics?

What was this guy smoking and where can I get some?

You want a title that was overlooked this year, Try Singularity or Enslaved: Journey to the West both seemed to get overlooked somewhat and are were great games.

I do so look forward to next years unsung heroes, Little Big Planet 2, Gears of War3, Uncharted3, Elder Scrolls V & Mass Effect 3.

I Want One of Those!: Razer Hydra & Switchblade

 Gaming, Personal  No Responses »
Jan 092011
 

Well the year has already seen it first trade show, namely the International Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas. While most of this show is about what is coming up in the terms of televisions and laptops, there is always plenty of interesting bits of gaming news that comes out too.

This year was no exception, and top of the crop this year in my opinion was Razer. They displayed two bits of tech for this year that really caught my eye.

The Razer Hydra

It seems that motion gaming is well and truly here to stay. What started with the Wii has now been copied by both the PS3 & 360, in the form of the Move & Kinect. I’ll admit that I have not bought either of those just yet, as to this point neither company has shown me anything that makes them stand that much above the Wii.

It was only a matter of time before the PC got in on the act directly, without the need for hacked versions of the Wii & Kinect controllers. The answer was first displayed at last years CES in the form of the Sixense technology, but this year saw Razer come packing its latest version of the tech, The Razer Hydra.

This was shown off to great effect with come custom-made Portal 2 levels, specifically designed with the Hydra technology in mind. As the video below shows these specially added levels with see you using the motion & positional sensing of the kit to twist, scale and move blocks and portals in three dimensional space.

My favourite example about a  is when the sneak up behind a turret at about 1:30, picks it up and then using the control to push it further away from them into a laser beam. This is followed by them showing off the ability to twist a mirror block to redirect the same beam in a way that would simple not be possible normally.

The Hydra is set to be released in April in a special bundle with Portal 2. The version of the game included in the bundle will support the controller natively obviously, but will also include a bunch of specially created maps & puzzles designed with the controller in mind.

With a  rumoured  sub-$100 pricetag on the bundle – I think I will have to grab one come April.

The Razer Switchblade

This was their big new prototype, and is meant to be the gaming equivalent of a net-book. The prototype Intel ATOM based mini laptop comes with a 7 inch touchscreen and a small yet comfortable looking keyboard. What is good about the keyboard buttons are customisable and will change based on the game you are playing.

This is done with the use of a second LCD screen underneath the keyboard, that projects up to the buttons surface in a similar way to those expensive MINI-LCD keyboards you can buy. However if you really wanted to use standard keyboards & mice the device will include Bluetooth & USB support for just that reason.

For a prototype and Concept device, this thing has certainly got a lot of people’s attention, myself included. The best part of the me is the on the fly configuration of the LCD keyboard. I will be keeping a watch on development of this to see if they can get it beyond the concept stage and into something they can actually bring to market.

Video below is IGN’s talking about the device after getting a press hands-on.

Could be an expensive year for Gaming Tech.

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