Civilian casualties? Whoops...

If I were to try and define my alignment (in a D&D sense) when it comes to games, I think it would probably be 'Chaotic Good'... do the 'right thing' but my own way. So, generally speaking, when it comes to moral choices in games, I do tend to throw my lot in on the 'good' side. I've tried being 'evil' and it rarely works out... I just can't help myself... but Prototype certainly takes some strides towards making you think just a little differently about the good and evil involved.


To fully explain this, I do need to spoil the plot a little. None of it is particularly surprising, but there are some people who just don't like to know what's coming... if that's you, you might want to stop reading this post after the next two paragraphs.

You start the game a little into the future of the story... armed to the teeth with some serious mutant firepower and battling against tanks, helicopters, soldiers and mutant zombies. So, right from the start you are fighting against traditionally 'good' forces... what appears to be the US Army attempting to defend New York from a viral infection that's turning everyone into mutants. The number of abilities and methods of attack at this point are vast. Not only can you mutate your arms in to a number of different weapons to crush, decapitate and generally make life unpleasant for those less 'blessed' than yourself, but you can also run fast enough to run up buildings, jump high enough to clear smaller buildings and make moving from rooftop to rooftop easy (and fun) and if that wasn't enough, you can consume civilians and soldiers alike to replenish your health and then impersonate them!

After a short bout of this, you are taken back to the starting point of the story... the part where you enter the plot. Confused and lacking in both powers and memories you find yourself being hunted by military and mutants alike. As you play through the various story missions and side tasks, you unlock more memories by consuming key figures (of which there are 130 I believe). Each person holding a little piece of the information that makes up the main story. Everything you do also gives you evolution points that you can 'spend' to get or improve your abilities.

During the early parts of this story, most of the civilian population around you is still human and uninfected... and avoiding killing them while you are battling with the military is nigh on impossible. Soon you are racking up thousands of civilian and military casualties without any real reason why... then the story really starts to unfold and you find out who is to blame for your condition and realise that the military (or at least part of it) isn't entirely innocent. The problem is, you just can't help slaughtering all these 'innocent' people to get to the guilty ones... and it doesn't take long before you just stop worrying about it (if you worried at all) and start to enjoying it! Suddenly, regardless of the reasons behind it, you are one of the bad guys... and it feels good!

So life as a monster is fun and fast paced. The mechanics of the game work well and it doesn't take much to get you zooming around, slaughtering things in new and interesting ways. Assuming the identity of a base commander and infiltrating the various military bases (before slaughtering everyone in them) was a particular highlight for me, as was taking over the attack helicopters using your grappling arm. Like a lot of open world games, there is a delicate balance between have too much, or too little to do at any point in the game... Prototype certainly manages the balance fairly well, I don't think I ever found myself with nothing to do, but there is a certain amount of repetition involved. Still, if you're enjoying the game, repetition isn't necessarily a bad thing!

Psychologically damaged billionaire seeks playmate...

First things first... a warning; I've not posted many 'reviews' on the games I've been playing recently, but I have been writing them so there's likely to be a flurry of activity over the next few days while I actually pull my finger out and finish what I want to say ;-)

And what better place to start than the surprisingly good Batman - Arkham Asylum!


And it was quite a surprise. There's not a particularly good track record (in my opinion, at least) where comic book tie-ins are concerned, especially when the developers decide to go down the 'Beat-em up' route... just take a look at the Watchmen game for a bland and repetitive example. I'm not saying they're all crap... but you're definitely fighting against the current.

The first thing you notice when playing for the first time is just how fluid the game is. The way Batman moves and fights is incredible. Especially considering that, at the beginning, you're only using two buttons: attack and counter. Each hit or counter is animated based on a number of factors, mostly on what you were just doing and what your target is currently doing. Thug running at you with a metal pipe? Catch the pipe and smack him in the chest with it. Attacking you from behind? A swift elbow to the face should fix that. Then add the great slow-motion finishing moves and you feel like you are the BEST beat-em up player ever!

Of course, if that was all that the game had it would get repetitive and dull quite quickly... and to be fair, the game IS fairly repetitive. Fortunately, that's not all it's got. For example, once you start moving around the Asylum, it's not long until you find yourself up against a couple of heavily armed foes. Batman, it would appear, is extremely vulnerable to bullets and one or two machine gun wielding thugs can easily take him out if he's not careful. This is where the game really starts to feel like Batman... gadgets. Flicking into 'Detective Mode' allows you so see thugs through walls, checking their stress/awareness levels, what weapons they're carrying and pick out any features of the environment you can use to your advantage. You can then use Batman's grappling hook to move around above the thugs and take them out stealthily. If you want to be picky, you could question how the bad guys never take a moment to look up (knowing that they are up against Batman, after all) but the stealth takedowns and sneaking about really works well.

As the game progresses, your array of gadgets grows until you're blowing holes in walls (and thugs) with explosive gel; taking out several thugs at once with multiple Batrangs; Or just hanging thugs from the frequent gargoyles around the asylum.

The game isn't, however, perfect. Some of the boss battles, for example, can be quite painful repetitive tasks sometimes. I understand that it's going to be quite hard to make all of them different but when they get it so right for some of them, it seems a shame that they resort to some sloppy old school 'hit the vulnerable spot when it is visible' battles. There are other smaller niggles, but none of prevent this game from being quite special.

Also, having played both the Xbox 360 and the PC versions, it's nice to see that they have taken the time to alter the control scheme to work on the PC, and taken advantage of higher resolutions. It's still fairly obvious that this was written with a Xbox 360 controller in mind, but it doesn't distract from the game.

Billy F*cking Talent!

So... guess who we went to see this evening... go on, guess!

Billy Talent? You're damn right it was! And it was awesome! Playing a good mixture of newer and older tracks, they really knew how to get the crowd going. Surrender proved to be a particularly popular song with the crowd.

Not only that, but we had a bit of a surprise with the support acts. Often when I've been to a gig where the 'guest act' are left unannounced until you get there, I've found that they're not normally that good. Certainly I had no idea who the two guest acts, Canterbury and the Cancer Bats, were until the gig.

When Canterbury walked on stage, I wasn't exactly impressed. Without sounding too much like a grumpy old man, they looked like a school band and I was expecting them to start droning on about how hard life was and how much they missed their Mum and Dad... I certainly wasn't prepared for the upbeat and high energy indie rock they started throwing out. They certainly made it look like they were really enjoying themselves and that always has a positive effect on the crowd. If you're interested in a listen, their album is available FOR FREE at this address: http://www.canterburythankyou.com/

Cancer Bats were a little heavier than I'd normally listen too but weren't bad. They certainly seemed to have a lot of fans in the crowd.

All in all though, a fantastic gig!

More internet woes... good job we weren't there!

Yet again I find myself without internet at home. My ISP has run a load of tests and, as per usual, they have all come back ok... excellent quality connection and the highest speeds. Great... still doesn't mean I have a working connection!

The most likely culprit at the moment is BT who may (or may not) be doing some work on my exchange *sigh*

Still... we were in Dorset for the weekend so I didn't really notice then! Chilli, alcohol and fireworks in the middle of nowhere surrounded by great friends... fantastic stuff :)

You've been tagged?

Stumbled upon a curious thing today... Microsoft Tag; Microsoft's entry into the barcode world.

Doesn't sound too exciting when you put it like that, but it is quite an interesting idea. Basically, with everyone seeming to have a smart phone these days (or the very least a phone capable of browsing the Internet) there seems to be a lot of interest in making it easier for people to enter your web address (hence the rather exponential number of short URLs floating about atm). Microsoft's Tag basically allows you to take a photo of the rather colourful 'barcode' and the Tag app will translate it into a web url or email address etc...

They certainly are the first to try this approach, but their barcodes are easily created, colourful and customisable!

For example, the three images below are all Tags for this website. The first is Microsoft's default barcode using triangles, the second is the basic barcode showing the bare minimum you need to be able use the Tag and the last one is a quick and dirty example of a customised barcode... it looks like a load of doodles but still works!

The easiest thing is to try for yourself... for the main website visit http://www.microsoft.com/tag/ and to get the application for your phone, go to http://gettag.mobi

Just don't!

Quick post today... Twin Sector... DON'T BUY IT (or else).

At the risk of devoting more time on this post than I could tolerate of the game:

- Cliche-ridden story
- Shocking animation
- Painful, grinding voice-acting
- Laughable gameplay

If this had been released 10 years ago... it still would have been crap!

In other news, work has calmed down a bit now so there will be a few more posts to come...

Summer time?

July and August have been quite busy months this year. Managed to squeeze a couple of weeks off work, which is always good. During my time off we managed to pack up a couple of bags (and the dog) and headed off to sunny Dorset for a weekend at Grizzly's manor. Lots of walking, drinking, eating and rocking out was had and a fun time was had by all, as usual :)

Sadly I came back to work to the usual summer time supplier troubles... I'm pretty sure I've had a rant about it before but I'll at least mention it again... where is the customer services?! Cable engineers that think it's ok to leave your buildings looking like an abattoir floor (oh, and a word of advice for any potential cable teams out there... if your door frame is 4cm wide, cutting a rough 3.5cm diameter hole in it and then cramming more cables through it than it's obviously going to take will not work... and the fire officer gets particularly upset when you do it to fire doors!), CCTV engineers that don't actually know how to wire the equipment they are putting in OR install/configure the software (so I end up doing it for them), security 'experts' not bothering to do ANY of the things they had promised a month ago... and then going on holiday, and then two month lead-times on essential equipment! Still... I think I've kicked enough ass to get most of it fixed before time runs out.
*deep breath*

Anyway... other than that I've managed to get a reasonable amount of gaming in. Certainly clocked up a few hours (and achievements) on Oblivion on the Xbox. It also seems to have been a quiet time for the MMO makers as I've had free time thrown at me by Everquest II, Warhammer Online and Lord of the Rings Online which meant I could play for a month without paying anything... always a good thing!

Strangely, one game that has come back into the picture and I've been spending a lot of time playing is Far Cry 2! I've owned it for quite some time but never really got into it when it first arrived. Whether it was because I was playing something else, or just not in the right mood, I don't know but I'm absolutely loving it now. The graphics and physics are pretty amazing and there are a lot of quite clever touches... I particularly like the 'buddy rescue' when you lose almost all of your health. Just a little more convincing than having lots of lives and yet the game can still afford to be a little brutal sometimes. The only real pain I've found at the moment is that, even after three patches, the game frequently crashes in DirectX 10 mode. It appears to be quite a substantial memory leak (if the forums are to be believed) and can be quite frustrating. No error messages and no warning, it just drops to desktop and if you don't reboot before attempting to play again, it'll happen again even sooner! Strangely I've been unable to find any comments from Ubisoft despite quite a lot of people apparently suffering from it. The easiest solution is just to run in DirectX 9 mode... but that's hardly a proper solution. At least it's still fun to play...

A telling sign?

This week I got the chance to play two new, very different games: Trine, a physics-based platform game, and Arma 2, a military simulator.

They couldn't be more different... in more ways that one.


Arma 2 is running on a game engine that's been built, tweaked, modified and updated over ten years. Currently in it's third generation it is (allegedly) used in training simulators by military all over the world. All I can say is good luck to them... despite already being patched (twice) the game is STILL a mess! For example, during the later stages of the 'Boot Camp' (where you are supposedly 'safe) I was taking part in some heavy weapon training... no sooner had I picked up one of the designated rocket launchers when I started to hear gun fire. To start with, I didn't think much of it (there was a shooting range not far away after all) until the bullets started sounding like they were getting closer... excellent I thought, it's an attack on the training camp, a sort of live exercise, what a great idea... and then I took a bullet in the chest (surviving, just) and looked up just in time to see my instructor gunned down by the unknown shooter which ended the game due to a "training accident". I don't honestly think there was supposed to be anyone firing at us during the training/tutorial and I've no idea if it happens every time as it frustrated me so much, I've not been back into that part of the game (trust me, the training is tedious). Having read a few reviews and reports, however, I don't appear to be alone... maybe when it's had a few more patches, this hardcore shooter will be worth another look.


Trine, on the other hand, really is quite amazing. You play the game as three different characters (you can only have one on screen at a time), a wizard that can manipulate and create objects, a thief that can shoot things from a distance and grapple on to things and a knight that can hack things, throw things and block incoming attacks. Using each of their unique abilities, you work your way through the colourful and animated world tackling numerous monsters and physics-based puzzles. The sheer polish on this game alone really puts the flawed Arma 2 to shame. I've yet to find anything that is even slightly out of place. Yes, it is a simpler and smaller game (Arma 2 covers 225 km² and has countless vehicles and weapons to play with) but maybe that's the point... maybe if the developers of Arma 2 has concentrated on making a smaller but more polished game they would then be in a position to follow the current trend of releasing the rest of the game via DLC?

I don't know for certain; I am, after all, only a gamer and novice developer. All I know is the amount of time I've lost to Trine instead of Arma 2... and isn't that what it's about?

Nuke it from space... it's the only way to be sure!

Cool new trailer for the latest AvP game. I've loved the previous ones and this is looking amazing!

Take a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an0gLnboLjE

More information can be found on Sega's blog here http://blogs.sega.com/usa/2009/05/20/new-aliens-vs-predator-details-and-images/

Yup... defintely one for my 'Most Wanted' list